I have no doubt that paying a membership fee to the ICBA will have its benefits, but having my name on the list will not make me a breeder or even an owner of Cornish.
I don't recall ever reading anyone slandering your birds. I've never seen a picture of the offspring, so can not comment on them on them even if wanted to. I think it possible to breed a hatchery Cornish up in quality, especially by using breeding quality Cornish like your one DC bred into them, but it would take longer and cost me more money to get one bred to what I think of as breeder quality than I want to invest. I suppose the term 'breeder quality' has different meanings to different people.
Personally I do not call myself a breeder, though I am breeding what I consider a few pretty good Cornish. To each their own at promotion, but until I can get to a few shows with a number of quality Cornish to compete against and let some qualified judges make a decision as to where my stand, I like simply to breed to suit my own eye and put my bird's pictures up for inspection for people to look at. P.T. Barnam never said "A new sucker is born every minute." [as sometimes falsely credited] but was a big promoter. However, he put on a good enough circus that many of the same people came back and bought tickets the next year or told others about the good show. I'm not much of a promoter, being nearly as likely to point out something I don't like on my own birds as something I like. I figure a quality Cornish needs no promotion other than letting anyone looking for and knowing quality Cornish see it. If I started promoting some of my current batch of hatchery sourced and crossbred Cornish as 'real' Cornish or 'breeder quality' Cornish, I believe I could sell them to newbies in good numbers because some do show a lot of Cornish influence. I also believe that anyone serious about breeding Cornish is going to either be offended that I called them Cornish, or amused that I consider them good quality, and certainly not likely to sell to me or buy from me.
