Show Off Your Games!

[cubalaya]

jungle, i meant no disrespect. dunghill was not meant as a derogatory word but simply not game. if an asil is not game then it is not asil. breeding leghorn or easter egger into pure gamefowl is a waste in my opinion. using gamefowl to improve a rare breed like cubalayas is grading and takes about 7 generations. i realize that these grades are worth nothing except their contribution of genes to the next generation. they are not game and i don't want them to be. cubalayas are not game. however i would never grade cubalaya into my asils.

 

[Jungleexplorer]

Thank you cubalaya. I was not writing specifically to you. I was make a general case and just used your last post as a starting point. I was simply presenting some alternate ways of thinking about raising chickens so that some people could broaden their minds beyond their own little universe and maybe learn to respect other people. But as a rational person, I think it is unreasonable of me to expect people that hold as their highest value the quality of not retreating in battle, even when they are soundly defeated (Game), to concede even the slightest on this issue. Just like the breed of chicken they our so proud of, they will refuse to backdown, right or wrong. It is to be expected I guess.

I want everyone here to understand that I was not arguing for or against anything or trying to say one idea is superior then any other. I was just trying to bring some balance to the conversation. I am able compartmentalize my feelings and ideologies when it comes to raising chickens. Just because I raised chickens one way in the Amazon, does not mean that I have not learned to raise them a different way here. Whether there or here, I still expect my birds to fulfill the first law of survival. Because my birds here are products man's selection, they have lost the survival qualities that my birds in the Amazon possessed. So, I have had to find other ways of making my birds produce more then they consume. The only way to do this is to make them pay rent buy earning me income. Since Americans only value birds that are products of Man's selection (pure breeds), I understand that for the value of my chickens products to go up, I must breed them according to the accepted standards. A dozen eating eggs go for $3, but a dozen purebred hatching eggs goes for a lot more. Get my drift? And when it comes to gamefowl, if the are not game, well, they are worth nothing to people that want to buy gamefowl. I raise gamefowl. I keep them separate and I choose which ones to breed.

Hopefully now, you guys will understand that I do understand the way you think. I also understand that there is a long history to Gamefowl and that some people take a lot of pride and derive a lot of personal validation from raising them successfully. In a different era, this question of which bird has game or not would have been decided by the birds themselves. But we do not live in that era, so we are left with the option of talking each other to death on this forum. LOL!

Let's at least try to have some fun while doing so.

 

[owisanonfarm]

'It is possible to get gameness From a non game hybrid' - just like getting something out of nothing? Half game is not game IMHO.

 

[fowlsessed]

That's fine, I'm sure we all get you, Jungle. And neither was my post aimed at you, merely partially instigated by certain parts of your post.
We may all very well respect each other's ideas, without having to "give" at all to their rational. Which may be wrong. There is right and wrong in everything we do, from driving down the road, to breeding Gamefowl. Even if not everyone agrees on what it is!
I'm not trying to carry on, just hopefully making clear where I stand> in a position that gives everyone the right to decide for themselves between right and wrong, but that doesn't make what they think automatically right. (including myself, of course)

 

[gallo4319]

In my on opinion a game or gameness fowl
Have to have certain qualities
A) hard feathered
B) compact body ( muscular in good fitnes)
C) cold blood ( birds that tolerate pain )
D) hight on stamina
E) smart
There is more to mention

 

[fowlsessed]

Gallo, as you know, there are many different types of Gamefowl, bred for different venues, which utilize very different traits. But I wont go there here!

 

[Jungleexplorer]

In my on opinion a game or gameness fowl
Have to have certain qualities
A) hard feathered
B) compact body ( muscular in good fitnes)
C) cold blood ( birds that tolerate pain )
D) hight on stamina
E) smart
There is more to mention

Let me get this straight. You believe that if a bird matches these qualities, they can be considered game (not gamefowl)? The reason I ask is this; my flock in the Amazon was obviously made of a wide range of genetics, but they possessed more game (attitude) then any bird I have seen in this country. I am not talking a little bit here, I am talking about a 1000% more then anything I have seen here.

Before I explain more, I have a question. Because of my mutli-cultural background and extensive life experience dealing with different lifestyles and humans on multiple continents, I have a much broader view of reality then if I were born and raised in the same town and only was influenced by a subset of the American society that all think the same way and view everything from the same limited perspective (social conditioning). Because of this, I view the natural battles for dominance that occur in nature as an imperatively essential part of nature and the process of natural selection. To me it is completely separate issue from the battles induced by man for profit or personal glory. My fear is that, because of the limited world view of some people on this forum (and especially those that moderate), that they are mentally incapable of separating the two issues when it comes to chickens because of there extreme separation from the natural way chickens are raised in most of the world. I am I correct in assuming this?

The reason I ask is, that I would like to discuss the characteristic of my birds in the Amazon, but I fear that some would think I was talking about a totally separate issue that is not allowed to be discussed on this forum.

 

[CUDA]

What you need to understand is there is only one type of game, either they are, or they aren't. With gamefowl they have been refined for strictly deep gameness and performance. This has literally nothing to do with natural selection, nor wild jungle type fowl. I can't speak on the birds you had in SA, but I can tell you there is a huge difference between wild birds, and game bred gamefowl. Gamefowl were bred for one reason only, while birds intended to range in the wild on their own will not be even close to the same thing IMO. It's one thing where nature has allowed fowl to learn how to stay alive with little human care, while it's quite another when they have been bred for a specific purpose by humans. I can tell you, that any decent gamefowl bred in America were let loose as they are, no matter the space available, if a cock found another cock, one or both would end up dead. Now allowed to breed over time that way, on their own, you will end up with birds that won't kill each other any more as it isn't beneficial to survival in the wild, and you would end up with dunghill fowl for what we consider gamefowl. Now they would be very adaptive to survival in the wild eventually, but they won't be pit game anymore. I would say that what you consider game is like what you would see in a pheasant or the like, but game when it comes to chickens, specifically gamefowl is the absolute intolerance to other males near them, and the willingness to sacrifice their own life to either kill, or drive away the other bird. It is a man made condition to be sure, but also a refinement of natural gameness to the extreme. I don't know any other way to explain it.

 

[fowlsessed]

Good Cuda. Exactly.
No, Jungle, what Gallo mentions does NOT make a bird "game". Cuda described what "game" is. "Gameness" is only one, simple (yet extremely complex) thing: the willingness of a cock to die trying to rid all other males from his presence, anytime, anywhere, at all costs....basically. It is inborn, and naturally occurring in Gamefowl...breeding is its ultimate enemy.
Jungle, I would love to hear more about your "Amazonian chicken experience" I think it would make a wonderful, abstract, and thoroughly interesting subject. They are not gamefowl, neither are they fighting chickens, or anything of the like, just because they engage in long, often serious battles, so BYC shouldn't mind this most enlightening branch of the poultry world. You know I spent a little time in Honduras living there with my folks as Missionaries. A little more civilized then where you were, but still quite primitive and the chickens were "fend for yourself", work things out yourself, roost where you will etc. And harvested when ready to eat. So maybe I'll be able to relate a little bit.

 

[BKPUCKETT]

why argue about GameFoul there is a test...and it will tell every time...