How long ago did you see these wins? What kind of competition? We can only judge how the bird looks in the picture. I have no idea what it looks like in person. Well I think the wings are too low and most judges would agree...probably all judges. They are low in the picture....that's all I can judge. It is a training example
The female tail of the Wellies is not a well spread tail. See page 164 of the 2010 SOP. It is different than most large fowl females. I cna't see how it would benifit from extra tail feathers.
Number of tail feathers. The SOP does not give tail feather counts. The breeders that add all the extra tail feather do it because they can't get wide feathers. You don't need a lot of feathers to give the tail the full look if you have wide tail feathers. Too many tail feathers gives you a tail that looks like a peacock and it appears unbalanced. The only feathers with counts are the wings. 10 primary, 10 secondary and one axial in the center.
RE judging: Judges are people....half of the physicians in this world were in the bottom half of their class too. People have different way of looking at things and if they don't go by the Standard....well that is when you get these screwy placements. The fact is that many judges here in the US have never seen or have seen very few Wellies in the last ten years. There are judges in the south that have probably never seen one. I go to a lot of shows...all over the US and you don't see them....or the Barnevelders for that matter. Maybe they were more common 20 years ago. As I said earlier. There are a lot of judges that have never been tested on a Wellie and if they don't see them or someone doesn't talk them up, why would they spend the time to learn about them. This is a different time now Bjorn.
Walt
Walt, I totally agree with you on the number of main tail feathers, and I pointed it out to a couple of judges in connection with class winning white Leghorns (in one case BIS!), but was ridiculed for it. In one discussion, it was held that the extra feathers were even desirable so that it was something they would breed for. This was about 10-12 years ago, and these were major AP sanctioned Pacific NW shows.
The standard for Welsummers does not mention anything about tail spread ... and I doubt whether a tail spread like that of a Leghorn would be desirable. The standard picture on page 164 I am certainly familiar with, as I was the one who drew the outline and faxed it to Diane Jacky, which I did after checking out Dutch and British illustrations and making sure the tail angle was correct (in keeping with the steeper angle of the original breed description) according to the adopted APA's SOP and after numerous consultations and input from Horst (Greczmiel). The tail on the hen is not what I call well spread (compare with the picture of the Lakenvelder, the standard for which specifies a "well-spread" tail), as it has not been part of the standard specification. While I personally do not care for a Welsummer hen with a pinched tail (but that's just a personal preference and has no backing in the standard) [as an aside, pinched tails are commonplace in many British breed versions, such as Leghorns, Minorcas, and others], I could not hold that against a hen that is otherwise excellent in all other respects, could I? In our American version, again, we may specify spread of tail, but that needs to be part of the standard. The color of the female in the standard illustration is far from the ideal, and I think that calls for a redo.
By far the best representative of the breed I have seen was a hen shown by Royce, and I had a hen (years ago) that was hatched out of eggs from Lowell Barber (parentage: a hen of the original UK imports x a cockerel I hatched from the same original imports x an incredibly nice cockerel stemming from other eggs brought in from the UK a couple of years prior), as Lowell Barber and I routinely traded eggs and birds over the years. I also traded birds and eggs with Horst (who actually preferred mine over his own) and another gentleman (who wants to be unnamed) in British Columbia who felt that his German type birds were superior. I cannot recall if I traded any with Erhard, but I did a couple of times with the late Ron Nelson in Wisconsin, who was a top notch breeder but did not show.
These are some of my musings on this subject, and my contributions may not do much in the way of clarifying anything. I do, however, care much for the breed and hope that, whatever happens, any decisions and future actions will all be for the best of the Welsummers and their future in this country, and not for the sole purpose of pushing any personal agenda. There is no need to recreate the breed beyond what has already happened by our putting together a standard that seems to be somewhat eclectic in picking some of this and some of that.
Regards,
Bjorn
