The australian australorps kept evolving while america sort of got away from breeding chickens for commercial grocery store chickens. Australians added croad langshan , clean legged langshan, , more english orpington, and created a bird with a much shorter tail, rounder darker eye ect...There is nothing wrong here that we cant fix. In my opinion, Australians are pushing the limits thou. The australorp is described as the bird of curves, If you look at australian web site , looks like a lot of the birds are loosing thier curves tail almost too small . They begin to look unbalanced to me. Like something is missing. he should curve from beak to tail, The bird in the nationals picture is a fine example of a bird who curves from his beak through his topline into his tail.tip of beak slightly curves down, he gently curves through his neck and back into tail and the tail gently curves down . A wonderful bird..Some of. many american australorps have a bit more leghorn and even some RIR thrown in..gave bigger tails but reatined egg laying capabilitys
Heres an interesting note from Ray connors book the australorp, he said that back when australorps were winning one world record after another for egg laying, somone in USA with some deep pockets imported all of those record egg laying birds here..Then when we moved more into the work force and off the farm, the australorp and delaware, buckeye and lot of other breeds fell by the wayside and some still on critical list..What a shame..the buckeye breeders are doing a fantastic job of bringing back the breed and delaware breeders are working up a storm, Australorp lovers are quietly working along , the bird that won nationals (love to know who his owner is) Think its posted at the site but that bird looks familiar to me, also love to know his origions..
Australians experience problems too, birds too up in the leg, red webbing between the toes, a no no, white beaks when adult. ect... ect... I think if they arnt careful they will ruin the over all look.. Ray connor is the 17 time world champion breeder.