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I will agree with you to a point. This was discussed on another thread about the latest "fads". The latest fads always bring super high money at the beginning, followed by people growing out and either selling eggs, chicks, or birds, in order to recoup their initial cost. This is where it is up to the responsable breeders to do the right thing. I have some of these fad breeds, paint silkies, silver laced brahmas, and tolbunt polish. The difference is, I have no intention of turning around and selling any of these to recoup any cost or get my name out there. These 3 breeds need work to get to where they should be. Quite honestly, the paints are the ones that are the closest to the standard of all three of those that I have, Look at the auctions and see how many people are putting junk out. I was criticized not to long ago for kill culling birds that don't make the cut, on the same page a few post down from that someone asked why more people didn't breed like the old timers. Truth is, most people don't put the work into it the way the oldtimers did. And many of those oldtimers don't have the patience to come over here and listen to nonsense from someone who has less years on this earth than they have breeding birds. Many of the oldtimers didn't want to turn out junk, they wanted it right, and they wouldn't let anything out of their flocks until it was right. I sat with an old breeder and had him instruct me how to cull junk right out of the incubator so I wasn't even feeding something that wouldn't make the cut. Many new breeders can't or won't do that.
This is how I feel about those "fad breeds". If more breeders took the time to actually work on something, and do it right, we wouldn't see all the junk coming down the line. I truly believed that if more breeders completely eliminated the bad traits coming out of a variety by burying them, we wouldn't see the amount of poor birds that sometimes disgusts me. You yourself have one of these so called "fad breeds" with the tolbunts. So to you I will issue a challenge, do the breed justice. Don't release anything from your flock if there is a chance that the person receiving it will not help out the variety. Don't be one of these small time backyard hatchery wannabe's that's there only to make a buck. Work hard at it, learn from yours and others mistakes, mine included. You eluded to some problems with your tolbunt and laced crosses and chick vitality. I just posted about this on the tolbunt thread with my experience to that.
I am all for new varieties that are done right. There are people on this website working at creating new varieties. I have seen chocolate silkies, chocolate orps, lavender wheaten ams, chocolate wyandottes, crele polish, large fowl silkies, and many other projects listed within these pages. However I don't see these flooding the poultry community yet so that tells me that we still have breeders who are truly working on projects and not just putting out junk.
