Kleindeirenexpo

Which translates as "small animal expo" -- small meaning anything not classed as livestock. After I made a whirlwind trip to the market this morning we all suited up and headed for the cattle market. (I was skeptical as to what the venue would be like but it turned out to be a really great building with tremendous skylights so even though it was an enormous warehouse sized building it was lit inside entirely with natural light). That was the venue for the 2006 Kleindeirenexpo. Featuring entires of about 8500 animals -- 4000 odd which were rabbits of every shape and size. We saw little 'uns with short ears and punched in noses that looked like ewoks. We saw "regular" looking rabbits. We saw rabbits with "mascara" eyes, we saw GIANT rabbits -- the picture doesn't show scale but they were probably 30 - 36" long. Really LARGE rabbits.




There were also pigeons (the original impetus to find the event) of variety and color seen infrequently or even not at all in the States.




But the big winners of the day were the poultry. Ducks, Geese, Chickens of all shapes, sizes, and colors and even a few Turkeys






which were Elena's favorites. My favorite was the Texas rooster (sorry about the cage bar through the eye).

And Erin liked these funky fellows.



In addition to all the neat birds in cages (there were also doves, quail, some pheasant) there were rides for kids (bounce house, merry go round, race cars, mini golf, bumper cars) and a really great petting zoo with some incredibly mellow chickens. Elena and Erin petted one little banty until it fell asleep in their hands.



We spent about 2 hours there and were sorry to leave. Elena zonked on the way home almost immediately and we all took a little snooze when we got home -- expoing is hard work!