APA/ABA culture for Newcomers

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
I'm wondering if the lavender gene is what is meant? It does have some documented issues. And from what I've read, lavender is being bred into breeds more often than blue.

 

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

That makes more sense to me. Thanks!

 

[Yellow House Farm]

So, how does a new person to showing and breeding standard-bred fowl find stock? How do you not get scammed? These are common and important questions.

1. Join the APA (American Poultry Fanciers Association). If you're interested in bantams, join the ABA (American Bantam Association) Both publish a substantial yearbook annually with all sorts of information and pages and pages of ads from breeders letting you know what they breed.

2. Subscribe to the Poultry Press. It comes out monthly and is full of advertisement s for stock. It also advertises all of the APA/ABA sanctioned shows which is the training ground for any true breeder, and the folks there, if they don't know exactly where your breed of choice is, they'll now how to find out.

3. Attend the APA/ABA shows in your region. They are the only way you won't run your newly acquired stock into the ground in five years.

4. Avoid any sort of internet fad! This cannot be overstressed. Unrecognized imports are not a good training ground for the beginning breeder, and most established breeders wouldn't waste a single shaving on housing the vast majority of the newly imported malarkey that is available online. Current birds available that are not worth your time--not worth even a second glance--IF your goal is to learn how to breed for standard-bred quality, would be: anything that ends with "bar", Legbar, Isbar, etc; any unrecognized color of Orpington, Sussex or Brahma, any all black bird with a black face that isn't a Sumatra or a Silkie; any variety of Dorking that isn't White, Red, or Silver Grey (because real Coloreds don't exist anymore); "Swedish Flower Hens"; "Icelandics"; "Iowa Blues", "Apenzeller-Spitzhaubens", "Bresse". These, among others, are dead-end streets for anyone looking to learn the traditional (read "heritage") art of breeding standard-bred fowl.

5. Question: If you have something from the #4 list, and you're goal is to learn how to breed standard-bred fowl, what should you do?
Answer: Eat them, and get something else--see numbers 1, 2, and 3. Your time is worth something, and they are not worth your time.
PS: There's absolutely, positively no shame in starting over; rather, there's a whole bunch of courage and sound thinking.

5. Do not spend more than $10/chick or $50/mature bird unless you are getting your stock from numbers (1, 2, and 3), and it doesn't hurt to ask around at APA/ABA events to get a second opinion.

6. ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING THAT COSTS MORE THAN $10/CHICK OR $50/MATURE BIRD THAT IS NOT IN THE AMERICAN STANDARD OF PERFECTION IS A SCAM!!!!!! PERIOD. You are being hoodwinked and bamboozled into believing a song and story that has no substance. In fairness and in respect for a capitalist market, several people are capitalizing on beginner ignorance and are selling culls of ridiculous stock for painfully inflated prices (naughty, naughty, naughty), but you have to be smarter than the person selling you stock. CAVEAT EMPTOR--Buyer Beware!

7. Be wary of buying hatching eggs. With some important exceptions, many breeders, some might argue most breeders, whose stock is worth having, don't ship eggs. There are some exceptions to this rule, though; do your research.

 

[dretd]

...

4. Avoid any sort of internet fad! This cannot be overstressed. Unrecognized imports are not a good training ground for the beginning breeder, and most established breeders wouldn't waste a single shaving on housing the vast majority of the newly imported malarkey that is available online. Current birds available that are not worth your time--not worth even a second glance--IF your goal is to learn how to breed for standard-bred quality, would be: anything that ends with "bar", Legbar, Isbar, etc; any unrecognized color of Orpington, Sussex or Brahma, any all black bird with a black face that isn't a Sumatra or a Silkie; any variety of Dorking that isn't White, Red, or Silver Grey (because real Coloreds don't exist anymore); "Swedish Flower Hens"; "Icelandics"; "Iowa Blues", "Apenzeller-Spitzhaubens", "Bresse". These, among others, are dead-end streets for anyone looking to learn the traditional (read "heritage") art of breeding standard-bred fowl.

5. Question: If you have something from the #4 list, and you're goal is to learn how to breed standard-bred fowl, what should you do?
Answer: Eat them, and get something else--see numbers 1, 2, and 3. Your time is worth something, and they are not worth your time.
PS: There's absolutely, positively no shame in starting over; rather, there's a whole bunch of courage and sound thinking.

5. Do not spend more than $10/chick or $50/mature bird unless you are getting your stock from numbers (1, 2, and 3), and it doesn't hurt to ask around at APA/ABA events to get a second opinion.

6. ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING THAT COSTS MORE THAN $10/CHICK OR $50/MATURE BIRD THAT IS NOT IN THE AMERICAN STANDARD OF PERFECTION IS A SCAM!!!!!! PERIOD. You are being hoodwinked and bamboozled into believing a song and story that has no substance. In fairness and in respect for a capitalist market, several people are capitalizing on beginner ignorance and are selling culls of ridiculous stock for painfully inflated prices (naughty, naughty, naughty), but you have to be smarter than the person selling you stock. CAVEAT EMPTOR--Buyer Beware!
...

Yellow House Farm, you seem to be pretty adamant about not getting into 'x-bars'. Why do you think that they are so popular with newcomers to chicken breeding? Several breeds are going to try to get accepted into the APA SOP. Do you feel this is a futile process? Is the APA culture so negative towards imports that you think it will be too difficult to achieve that goal? Thanks for your insights in advance!

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Yellow House Farm, you seem to be pretty adamant about not getting into 'x-bars'. Why do you think that they are so popular with newcomers to chicken breeding? Several breeds are going to try to get accepted into the APA SOP. Do you feel this is a futile process? Is the APA culture so negative towards imports that you think it will be too difficult to achieve that goal? Thanks for your insights in advance!

I wouldn't say that the APA is "negative towards imports" in the sense that there is an issue with importation. It is that what is imported is very frequently not of strong quality, i.e. they're junk birds, or it is redundant, i.e., Spangled or Laced Orpingtons. These new importations distract newcomers from learning how to breed with established breeds that are a good training ground. One needs to look at and raise quality in order to understand quality. Just getting started in poultry, and choosing birds of low quality, without even having the understanding necessary to see that they are of low quality, is not a way to be successful in a layered endeavor such as poultry breeding.

Moreover, it bears noticing that there are no established breeders supporting these imports. Honestly, they don't want to waste their time, and they understand that there are far classier fowl out there. Why would an organization that is almost 150 years old full of dedicated and committed folk want to open the doors up to inferior fowl simply because they're the rage of the day? It's not perfectly clear what the motivation is to get these fowl into the Standard, but folks should first begin by learning how to breed veritable standard-bred fowl. That experience and know-how will then lead to the actual skills to get these breeds up to snuff or, perhaps, to a clear understanding as to why none of us have flocked to them in the first place.

 

[dretd]

Quote:
Thanks for your answer. I am still not sure why you think that the 'x-bars' are so popular, or if you can imagine why someone would want to waste their time on them--what do you see is the attraction for getting one of these breeds?

 

[Yellow House Farm]

To be honest I don't have an answer. You know, there's the old expression that "all that glitters is not gold."

I'd point out, though, that they're only popular here, i.e. among online chicken shoppers. They have no place in the world of poultry breeding. There are many fads that are popular here that have no impact in actual APA culture. It is why actually being involved in rt APA culture is so valuable. Among the cyber folks it seems like people ship each others eggs and then tell each other that they have good stock, but that's the end of it. You bring one of this birds to a real poultry show and put them beside an APA bird of quality and they look painfully out of place--slight, pinched, thin feathered, rough, high tailed, and meager.

So why are they popular? Well, I'd say they aren't popular. Common among some cyber folks? Perhaps. Enduring? I wouldn't think so.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

What Is an APA/ABA "Breed" Anyways???

The American Poultry Association is the oldest livestock organization in the US. That's worthy of consideration. They, we, have been doing this for a long time. There is a method to the madness, and there are real differences between two-legs (poultry) and four-legs and the way we deal with the question of breed.

In APA culture there are not official breed registries. There are no official club pedigrees. This does not mean that individual breeders do not maintain pedigrees; rather many of the top breeders do. However, the quality of such and such a bird is not, officially at least, discussed via its pedigree. In APA culture, the Standard of Perfection is the pedigree of the fowl. Breeds, and this always has been, are defined by shape; i.e., a certain breed is a certain shape, and every breed must have a distinct shape to make it a breed. In the APA/ABA Youth Club, participants are given white cards with a black silhouette, and the goal is to look at that specific silhouette and be able to state the breed simply by seeing the shape. Thus, for clarity, the very designation "breed" in the APA is a redundancy; we use it out of convention. The clearest, most didactic term would be to say "shape", i.e. the Dorking shape, the D'Uccle shape, the Rouen shape, the Toulouse shape, the turkey shape. We don't actually say shape; we say breed; but we know that thereby we mean shape.

(Wait a minute! Why the turkey shape??!! Why not the Narragansett shape or the Bronze shape?! Well, standard-bred turkeys are all the same shape; thus, all turkeys are one "breed". There are no breeds of turkeys; there is one turkey breed, because there is one turkey shape. There are only turkey varieties, because the variability is in the weight and color. Thus there is the Slate variety or the Royal Palm variety)

Why is this important? Well, there is a functionality to shape and very little, if any, functionality to color. Various shapes perform various functions better, or at least differently. Most shapes are aimed at, or at least attempt to serve, a practical, usually nutritive, occasionally pugilistic, function; however, some shapes are actually for nothing but aesthetic, e.g. Modern Games. This variety of function is key for the maintenance of universal appeal.

If pedigrees aren't mandated, does that mean that purity of blood is not important? Well, when it comes down to brass taxes, yes, poultry is discussed not in the framework of purity of blood but, rather, through purity of shape. A given specimen belongs to a breed by virtue of its shape, not via its blood and certainly not via its color. Color means nothing, and a "pure-bred" Dorking without Dorking shape will, at best, be called a bad Dorking--even if one loves it, even if one thinks it's pretty. It possesses that silhouette, or it does not possess that silhouette. That is the only qualifying or disqualifying question with concern to breed, and when a specimen possesses the required shape, we refer to it as being "representative of the breed", meaning, for all intents and purposes, it possesses the necessary shape. It is, therefore, a Leghorn because of its shape--and nothing else.

What does this mean about the way APA/ABA breeders see poultry? It means that when we look at a bird, generally speaking, our eyes draw a line around it, we trace the silhouette with our gaze. If we find the standard type we continue to analyze the bird; if we don't, the best you might hear is , "nice coloring, but it lacks type," which is code for, "regardless of what breed is implied by this coloring, it's not that breed because it does not have the right shape." Once one's eye works this way, once one has learned to see type, it dominates one's entire view of the bird. Indeed, this ability to see type is the basis for all breeding and judging. If one cannot see type, one cannot breed and one cannot judge.

What makes type? The type in the American Standard of Perfection is a shape. The shape is had by a careful balance of weight, skeletal structure, and feather quality. In some instances stance is also highly important.

Where, then, do hatcheries fall? Hatcheries are businesses; that is all. Some are old, some are new. Hatcheries acquire stock; then they house that stock in a flock mating environment, which means there are multiple cockerels and multiple pullets all together, and they breed indiscriminately. The breeding flocks are renewed each season, and there is little to no selection at all for the Standard-based qualities. The most important factor is egg-laying; the more eggs they lay, the more chicks they hatch and ship at a greater profit. That is all. Because hatcheries do not do the time-consuming work of selecting for shape, what we call, type, the shape of hatchery stock is undisciplined and highly variable. Moreover, because egg-production is the ideal, the meat qualities that a standard-bred shape is supposed to possess are often, even usually, lacking. It is why when one purchases "Sussex", "Plymouth Rocks", "NH's", etc...from a hatchery they seem to always be lacking at least in the meat department. It is simply because they are not selected for weight, nor are they selected for the skeletal framework that will support the meatiness that will come when muscled weight is added to a standard-bred skeletal shape.

Now, feather is extremely important; feather is the frosting on the cake. Does that mean that feather is superfluous and unimportant? Well, you bake a cake, don't frost it, stick a candle in the middle and put it in front of your kids and see whether or not they don't look at you sideways with an inquisitive look that says, "What the heck is this?" Perhaps this sheds a bit of light on why, when a judge is looking at a hatchery bird in a cage and he cranes his head to the left, with a look on his face that says, "What the heck is this?"; perhaps now this is beginning to make a bit more sense. Feather quality, or rather frosting, makes the wedding cake a wedding cake. It is what makes it beautiful. It is what makes it balanced. It is, as any cake-baker knows, what hides any structural weaknesses or imperfections. It is what gives the cake class, and ultimately it makes the shape. Consider a double layered cake. Take the two cakes and stack the one on top of the other; this alone does not create a finished product. It is the frosting that creates the visual effect for which the bready bit sets the stage. Indeed, one could say that "cake = sweetbread + frosting," and both must be in balance--bad frosting, bad cake; bad sweetbread, bad cake; both in balance, nice cake.

Now, here "feather" in no way means "color"! "Feather" asks four essential questions: how long are the feathers, how broad are the feathers, how many feathers are there, and how tightly or loosely do the feathers follow the skin-line of the bird? These are the four factors. Are they long, loose, profuse and fluffy?? Are they short, tight, hard, thin, and few? Are they moderately broad, and do they follow the general shape of the bird. Do they fall the right way and create angles or sweeps appropriately. All of these questions and more are what is meant by "feather". Mastering the feather concept is absolutely essential for the mastering of breeding and judging standard-bred poultry.

Hatcheries do not select for these qualities! Absolutely none of them--at all, in any SHAPE or FORM. Thus, hatcheries do not sell shapes, which means that hatcheries do not sell breeds. Hatcheries sell colors, colors that lay eggs; that's all. Hatcheries sell colors; they do not sell breeds because they do not sell shapes. When an APA/ABA judge or member who may or may not have ever ordered from a hatchery in his or her life, or, perhaps, not in the last twenty or more years, sees a Buff(-ish) chicken that lays eggs, they do not see an Orpington; they see a Buff bird. That's all, nothing more. If they're asked, "What do you think of my Orpington?" they're just going to demur or laugh, smirk, or smile, depending on their mood, and ask "What Orpington?" because in their world, they are not seeing an Orpington at all.

Again shape is the beginning of everything. If you have an awesome Orpington shape with poor color, you will be taken seriously. You will be told that you have good type, and you now have to work on color. They'll give you pointers, explain what's wrong, perhaps help you select an appropriate outcross to a different strain. If you don't have the right shape, they'll tell you to eat it and move on to something worth working with.

Does this mean that color is not important? Well, color is generally not important for breed designation, which was the point of the article, but it is fundamental for variety designation, i.e color and sometimes comb type. So, indeed, color is minimized with regards to what makes a breed a breed, but it is very important for discussing varieties. This might sound funny at first, but an APA judge, generally speaking, is going to respond much differently to a specimen with beautiful Brahma type that happens to be mottled, than to a pinched, squirrel tailed, relatively small and narrow Silver Penciled bird claiming to be a Brahma just because of a pea comb and a few feathers on the shanks. Again, it is type to which the APA breeder and judge responds.

Does this mean that other factors, such as economic qualities, are unimportant? No, indeed, the Standard of Perfections addresses these. It simply means that the dialogue begins with type, or shape, and then moves on from there. Type, shape, is the first step in understanding any APA or ABA recognized breed?

 

[dretd]

What Is an APA/ABA "Breed" Anyways???

The American Poultry Association is the oldest livestock organization in the US. That's worthy of consideration. They, we, have been doing this for a long time. There is a method to the madness, and there are real differences between two-legs (poultry) and four-legs and the way we deal with the question of breed.

If pedigrees aren't mandated, does that mean that purity of blood is not important? Well, when it comes down to brass taxes, yes, poultry is discussed not in the framework of purity of blood but, rather, through purity of shape. A given specimen belongs to a breed by virtue of its shape, not via its blood and certainly not via its color. Color means nothing, and a "pure-bred" Dorking without Dorking shape will, at best, be called a bad Dorking--even if one loves it, even if one thinks it's pretty. It possesses that silhouette, or it does not possess that silhouette. That is the only qualifying or disqualifying question with concern to breed, and when a specimen possesses the required shape, we refer to it as being "representative of the breed", meaning, for all intents and purposes, it possesses the necessary shape. It is, therefore, a Leghorn because of its shape--and nothing else.

What does this mean about the way APA/ABA breeders see poultry? It means that when we look at a bird, generally speaking, our eyes draw a line around it, we trace the silhouette with our gaze. If we find the standard type we continue to analyze the bird; if we don't, the best you might hear is , "nice coloring, but it lacks type," which is code for, "regardless of what breed is implied by this coloring, it's not that breed because it doesn't have the right shape." Once one's eye works this way, once one has learned to see type, it dominates one's entire view of the bird. Indeed, this ability to see type is the basis for all breeding and judging. If one cannot see type, one cannot breed and one cannot judge.

Where, then, do hatcheries fall? Hatcheries are businesses; that is all. Some are old, some are new. Hatcheries acquire stock; then they house that stock in a flock mating environment, which means there are multiple cockerels and multiple pullets all together, and they breed indiscriminately. The breeding flocks are renewed each season, and there is little to no selection at all. The most important factor is egg-laying; the more eggs they lay, the more chicks they hatch and ship at a greater profit. That is all. Because hatcheries do not do the time-consuming work of selecting for shape, what we call, type, the shape of hatchery stock is undisciplined and highly variable. Moreover, because egg-production is the ideal, the meat qualities that a standard-bred shape is supposed to possess are often, even usually, lacking. It is why when one purchases "Sussex", "Plymouth Rocks", "NH's", etc...from a hatchery they seem to always be lacking at least in the meat department. It is simply because they are not selected for weight, nor are they selected for the skeletal framework that will support the meatiness that will come when muscled weight is added to a standard-bred skeletal shape.


Hatcheries do not select any of these qualities! Absolutely none of them--at all, in any SHAPE or FORM. Thus, hatcheries do not sell shapes, which means that hatcheries do not sell breeds. Hatcheries sell colors, colors that lay eggs; that's all. Hatcheries sell colors; they do not sell breeds because they do not sell shapes. When an APA/ABA judge or member who may or may not have ever ordered from a hatchery in his or her life, or, perhaps, not in the last twenty or more years, sees a Buff(-ish) chicken that lays eggs, they do not see an Orpington; they see a Buff bird. That's all, nothing more. If they're asked, "What do you think of my Orpington?" they're just going to laugh, smirk, or smile, depending on their mood, and ask "What Orpington?" because in their world, they are not seeing an Orpington at all.

Again shape is the beginning of everything. If you have an awesome Orpington shape with poor color, you will be taken seriously. You will be told that you have good type, and you now have to work on color. They'll give you pointers, explain what's wrong, perhaps help you select an appropriate outcross to a different strain. If you don't have the right shape, they'll tell you to eat it and move on to something worth working with.

Very interesting information and helpful to gain some understanding into the thought or 'culture' of the APA.

I would love to get more information from you--if you wouldn't mind sharing more of your point of view!

I was wondering if the APA has a mission statement? In other words, what is the ultimate goal of the APA summed up in a 30 second elevator pitch?

I have struggled with the 'that's not a "blank-insert breed here" ' that I see coming from 2 places: 1) mostly breeders or APA judges in the Chicken ID thread and 2) Breeders in a certain breed threads when someone posts about their birds.
- I will see someone struggling to identify their bird and look at it and think that it is obviously a Hatchery Quality blank because I look at plumage color, yes, but also comb, leg color, skin color general body type and it will be obvious to me that it is a poor quality BO, for instance were a breeder will say 'that's not a BO'. Considering there are very few Show Quality birds around and even breeders may cull heavily, at what point in your mind does a bird go from a poor example of a blank to a 'that's not a blank'? I really struggle with that since it seems pretty dismissive of the bird's origins/not very descriptive to call an obviously (albeit poor) type just a mutt.
-You have minimized the importance of color. Yet I see two birds that are from a single breed (like Ameraucanas or Brahmas for instance) where two varieties have been cross bred and the coloration is no longer correct. Those birds are referred to as mutts. You are saying that color is not important, but clearly it is a very important disqualifier for at least some breeds. So when you are talking color, are you talking the fine details of a certain color or color range of the appropriate color?

I also struggle with the assumption that all birds coming out of hatcheries are bad. Some are decent and some are horrible. I had a Faverolles I got from a hatchery a while back and she wasn't too far-off looking at her type ( has an obvious Faverolles silhouette) but she had some black in her beard. She would probably make a good choice to put in a rooster line pen if you were double mating. In researching it at the time, I read that one hatchery had purchased some good quality show roos and this may have skewed the quality of the pullets they hatched with regard to plumage color. So you are saying that color is insignificant yet the hatchery got dinged (flamed on BYC) for producing off-colored pullets when their type wasn't too bad (to my uneducated eye). It kind of seems like they are in a no-win situation.

Your emphasis is that type is the most important thing to look at and what makes or breaks a bird. I look at the SOPs for many breeds and they have a little synopsis of the breed history and economic qualities including egg color. For many people who are getting into chickens, there is an expectation that they will get a productive bird and just as you lamented the lack of meat in the dual purpose breeds, I also want a reliably productive egg layer. How does the APA deal with these qualities (like wrong egg coloration ie not the terra cotta in Welsummers, or lack of egg productivity in a breed like a Leghorn) that are part of the 'spirit' of the breed if you will, but are not something that the birds can be judged on at a show?

I look forward to hearing more about your breeding philosophies and the APA viewpoint. This is a really helpful thread.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Very interesting information and helpful to gain some understanding into the thought or 'culture' of the APA. Awesome questions. Thanks for taking the time.

I would love to get more information from you--if you wouldn't mind sharing more of your point of view!

I was wondering if the APA has a mission statement? In other words, what is the ultimate goal of the APA summed up in a 30 second elevator pitch?

I have struggled with the 'that's not a "blank-insert breed here" ' that I see coming from 2 places: 1) mostly breeders or APA judges in the Chicken ID thread and 2) Breeders in a certain breed threads when someone posts about their birds.
- I will see someone struggling to identify their bird and look at it and think that it is obviously a Hatchery Quality blank because I look at plumage color, yes, but also comb, leg color, skin color general body type and it will be obvious to me that it is a poor quality BO, for instance were a breeder will say 'that's not a BO'. Considering there are very few Show Quality birds around and even breeders may cull heavily, at what point in your mind does a bird go from a poor example of a blank to a 'that's not a blank'? I really struggle with that since it seems pretty dismissive of the bird's origins/not very descriptive to call an obviously (albeit poor) type just a mutt.
This at first makes sense. Of course, I can look at the hatchery Barred Rock and suspect that once upon a time its ancestors might have been standard-bred Barred Rocks. Perhaps a flock of well-bred birds was purchase as seed stock by a hatchery that, because of selection practices, or lack thereof, over time, the stock has simply degraded. Indeed, there very well may be a high level of plausibility to that. The change occurs, though, when on remembers, or truly understands, that the "blood" question is not part of the breed question. When we say "mutt", we tend to give it the four-legged definition of a cross between to breeds. The foreign blood makes it a mutt, but poultry are not bred for purity of blood, per se; they are bred for purity of type. The corruption of type, and not of blood in and of itself, is what causes something to no longer be "representative of the breed." It just becomes a Barred chicken, and that's how we'll frequently make reference to it; we just shrug our shoulders and say, "Yup, it's a chicken."
Four generations ago, I was Italian. I still speak Italian. I look pretty central Italian. I still go to my village near Rome, but when it comes down to it, I'm American. Italian-American? Sure, but American nonetheless. My nephews just think I'm the uncle with the funny accent. Then they tell me about Spanish words they learned at school, because to them, hey, Italian? Spanish? It's all the same thing--something they're not. Every single year is a generation for chickens. That's a huge thing to think about. If such and such a hatchery has been running their flock of NH's for 20, 30, or 40 years with only occasional--if any--infusions, that's 20 to 40 generations since the original immigration. It might not have changed the very basics of what one recognizes as "Once Upon the Time, this was a NH", but it has changed everything else. Once one understands how it works, one looks at them says, "Yup, just a chicken."
-You have minimized the importance of color. Yet I see two birds that are from a single breed (like Ameraucanas or Brahmas for instance) where two varieties have been cross bred and the coloration is no longer correct. Those birds are referred to as mutts. You are saying that color is not important, but clearly it is a very important disqualifier for at least some breeds. So when you are talking color, are you talking the fine details of a certain color or color range of the appropriate color?
Well, there is only one breed for which plumage color is a "breed trait"--the Rhode Island Red. No other breed is defined by color. The root of the problem in the above scenario would not be that it were a different color; it would be because the type would be broken.
Now, color is not important for breed designation, which was the point of the article, but it is fundamental for variety designation, i.e color and sometimes comb type. So, indeed, color is minimized with regards to breed but the next essay should probably be about varieties. This might sound funny at first, but an APA judge, generally speaking, is going to respond much differently to a beautiful Brahma that happens to be mottled, than to a pinched, squirrel tailed, relatively small and narrow Silver Penciled bird claiming to be a Brahma just because of a pea comb and a few feathers on the shanks. Again, it is type to which the APA breeder and judge responds.
I also struggle with the assumption that all birds coming out of hatcheries are bad. Some are decent and some are horrible. I had a Faverolles I got from a hatchery a while back and she wasn't too far-off looking at her type ( has an obvious Faverolles silhouette) but she had some black in her beard. She would probably make a good choice to put in a rooster line pen if you were double mating. In researching it at the time, I read that one hatchery had purchased some good quality show roos and this may have skewed the quality of the pullets they hatched with regard to plumage color. So you are saying that color is insignificant yet the hatchery got dinged (flamed on BYC) for producing off-colored pullets when their type wasn't too bad (to my uneducated eye). It kind of seems like they are in a no-win situation.
The good bird coming out of the hatchery is/would be a rare thing, indeed. This is because a line of good birds is a very intentional thing. Birds are thorough-bred because they are constantly selected to be so. Five years can turn a line on its head, but remember, in chicken talk, that's five generations--remember my nephews. Now, with all do respect, was the Faverolles pullet "good" from your perspective or from a judges perspective? We can become accustomed to the general idea of a breed, even fairly accustomed to it, but it takes some serious time on task to learn all of the fine points that constitute an excellent bird. It takes a lot of comparative study and a lot of mentoring. What make look like a good bird to us, may actually have some major flaws to which our eyes are yet to be attuned. I should add that it is not unheard of for exhibition lines to be bred out of hatchery stock, but it would naïve to imagine that that comes without an outstanding amount of culling, over time, to rigid criteria.
Your emphasis is that type is the most important thing to look at and what makes or breaks a bird. I look at the SOPs for many breeds and they have a little synopsis of the breed history and economic qualities including egg color. For many people who are getting into chickens, there is an expectation that they will get a productive bird and just as you lamented the lack of meat in the dual purpose breeds, I also want a reliably productive egg layer. How does the APA deal with these qualities (like wrong egg coloration ie not the terra cotta in Welsummers, or lack of egg productivity in a breed like a Leghorn) that are part of the 'spirit' of the breed if you will, but are not something that the birds can be judged on at a show?
Economic traits were, for all intents and purposes, deemphasized after the schism between standard-bred and production-bred poultry that occurred shortly after the institutionalization of the widespread use of trap-nests. This sort of shift is not uncommon when institutions undergo fundamental changes; however, there is some emerging interest in reemphasizing these aspects. Time will tell what shape that will take. Regardless, from my breeding experience, I would much rather take a typical chick and breed toward production, maintaining type, than start with a more productive, atypical bird and try to breed towards type while maintaining production. It must be understood, though, that standard-bred fowl, even as productive birds, are a middle ground. They are not about heavy production in a current sense. They come from a time that had different occupations and expectations.

I look forward to hearing more about your breeding philosophies and the APA viewpoint. This is a really helpful thread.I hope this helped to continue the thought process.