Ahh. For contest boards:

Battle boards - you get points based on the pets in your party and how many enemies you kill. For example, if you have a 3-kelp party, you will get 3 points on the kelp board for every 1 enemy you kill. (Mixed parties spread out the points - e.g. a party with a kelp, a lup, and a ryo would get 1 point on each board per 1 enemy killed.)

Nurturing boards - you get points based on how many pets of that species you nurture. 100 kelps nurtured = 100 points on the kelp nurture board.

OHHHHH! Okay and do I need to do anything to enter that contest with the kepls or do they just add points natural and at a certain date everything is added up?

If you have at least one kelp in your party, and a round of contests is active (it's not yet), and you're fighting in the fest zone, you'll automatically earn points.

Awesome! Thank you for being such a help with all this. I've never done one of these fests before. How will we know when the contest round is open? It is same with nurturing right? I have to wait for an announcement or some such and then nurture as many kelps as possible?

Basiclaly yes.

(Just be warned the boards can be....downright murderous if you're like me and spend more time on the forums then you do battling theres a reason their nickname is "murderboard"-both the technical ones and he nontechnical one.... XD)

OOO Yikes! Well I will give it a shot and if I get swamped I'll go back to peaceful coin gathering.

Good luck (personally I go for the lesser-done boards, they're a tad easier when battling lol)

Thank you for the advise! I really apricate how supportive this community is. We have such Great people both staff and players.

Are Kelpari rather heavily done? Which ones would you consider less done?

Kelps are semi-popular, but I don't think their boards are usually too bad.
The worst boards are usually fableds, especially griffs and ferries. Sometimes other more popular species too, like nixies or lups.
The least-done boards are the least popular species - things like bulbs, faes, draes.
As for timing of contests, there's not always an official announcement. Whenever times are decided though they'll be edited into the first post on this thread, added to MotD, and updated on the contests page as well.

Edit: also, all boards open at the same time. Every murderboard and every nurture board will all be open each round.

Honostly? During summer fest nytes weren't hat popular (lol that's he only way I made it on there haha) but nixis and quits are pretty popular so...eh.

But honostly for most boards I'd say 1k-2k battles will get you on any board. So about 300-650 battles per pet if you go three of a species at a time (e.g. 3 qits 3 nixie etc)