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would you still be my friend if I showed a Silver Creasted Legbar as a Cream Creasted Legbar in a show? would that be concidered cheating?
Here's the thing, I have no problem with folks doing some outcrossing to enhance traits then bringing the results back into the standard. I would't have a problem with you taking Light Brown Leghorns, Barred Rock, native Mapuche birds and even a hamburg or campine or whatever was used to grab the cream and recreating the Legbar from scratch and calling it a Cream Legbar.
I do however take issue with adding Silver as a substitute dilutor for Cream and here is why.
The Cream Legbar is genetically Cream. The standard calls for barred Cream and gray not Silver and gray. The name of the breed even has the color gene Cream in the name--its not Crested Legbar or Blue Egg Legbar, But the Cream Legbar. Needs to be Cream based or it is not a Cream Legbar even if it looks like a Cream Legbar. If you use Silver it is a Crested Silver Legbar and wouldn't meet standards for either bird.
An analogy. Lets say there was a brilliant chef and that had an awesome Beef Bourguignon recipe. There was a competition for Elk Bourguignon that he wanted to enter and decided that since you really can't tell the difference between elk and beef and beef is easier to buy and work with, he would go ahead and enter his recipe in this competition with the beef instead of the elk. Now if he wins the recipe competition in the category of Elk Bourguingnon, but he really made Beef Bourguignon and didn't tell anyone of his substitution, I submit that he cheated the competition and his fellow competitors who used the named ingredient that was in the title of the recipe competition. Doesn't matter if you couldn't tell the difference, he made a beef recipe in an elk competition. A no-no in my book and I would think that, although the chef is clearly brilliant, I would be very disappointed in him for his actions to use beef instead of sticking with the challenge of using elk.
