I'm not disagreeing with y'all--folks claiming that they have something they do not, when they didn't bother to educate themselves, is misleading, frustrating, & annoying. I don't think anyone should be selling something that they can't even spell, and if they can't spell it, they darn sure aren't qualified to label them as a certain quality. But...don't you think the more constructive thing to do would be to gently try to educate folks who do this? I don't necessarily think that most people do this kind of thing intentionally. Maybe they are repeating something that they were told by someone whose opinion they trusted. Maybe they would appreciate some information and enlightenment...or maybe not, but seriously, why just attack & belittle someone right from the get-go? A bit of constructive criticism may be welcome. We were all newbies at some point. Like I said, no excuse for not educating yourself before you go making claims of having show quality birds, but this isn't helping that issue...
And yes, I have seen exhibition quality breeders advertise. In the Poultry Press, in show programs, on more private breed forums. Also, yes, you can have a show quality bird of a variety or breed that is not recognized. Take black copper Marans as an example. There is a written standard for this variety of this breed. Folks are showing them--they can only go as high as best of breed, but they can be shown
against their standard. This is the only way for them to be recognized with the APA. The show quality birds have to come before the acceptance. C'mon now, y'all know this.
Seriously, I'll get off my soapbox in a moment, but part of the reason that BYC is so cool is because most folks here seem like genuinely good people who like to help each other out and educate each other. This is why I like this forum. We can all do better than just needlessly poking fun at folks because they don't know what kind of birds they have. I'm not saying not to talk about/address the problem (and I do think it's a problem that folks don't always know what they have, for example the easter egger/Ameraucana/Araucana confusion), I'm just saying there's a more constructive way to go about it.
Flame me if ya have to.
