Quote:
I know there was at least a feeler put out to the Cornish breeders club members about addressing the eye color issue pertaining to the standard, as in possibly changing the standard. Not sure if any thing came of it.
It would be nice to see something done about it. I know type should be first followed by color but growing up I was always awe-struck when I saw grandpas cornish with the stunning white eyes. I was just up north judging a fair and lots of nice cornish but they all had reddish bay eyes, the one that had pearl eyes was a hatchery stock WLR pullet that had the type of a plymouth rock and looked like a red sexlink in color (mostly solid white tailed red) but it did have the pearl eyes. I think they said it was an Ideal bird. I pointed out to a breeder of the darks that the hatchery bird has the eyes his birds should have.
I have to agree that the pearl eye looks neat. Is the gene for it a recessive? The closest to it I've seen in my short experince with Cornish is pale yellow, and I suspect that color to be unrelated to the pearl eyes seen on some show games.
Were your grandfather's birds more of the Indian Game type than the over exaggerated, low-rider, looking birds now dominateing the shows? I have to admit the low-riders look kinda neat, but absolutely abhor the fact that modern show Cornish have devolved into a bird that is so limited by its exaggerated form that many can't even cover a hen naturally. I see some with shanks that can best be described as "cankles". I see the standard calls for them is to have large, well rounded, legs set very widely apart, moderately short in length. Legs or feet materially affecting the natural movement of the specimen is an expressly mentioned disqualification. As a judge, have you ever disqualified an individual because its legs were so short, and set so widely apart that they prevented natural movement........................ or even lowered one in the placeings because of these defects?
