Patty, I'm not sure if you are including me in the "rest of you" group, so I'll respond to your question just in case you were. I am not "upset" about what anyone else is doing with their flock. I am only concerned about what I'm doing with my flock. It is my goal to produce exhibition quality BCM's that conform to the APA standard. I fully understand that it will be a long journey, but it is my opinion that the journey will be a shorter distance with birds that have no Wheaton in them. We both have been around long enough to know that there are significant, widespread, problems in the very limited US BCM gene pool. The failed APA acceptance showing this year was proof positive of that.
You mention that there are both breeders who want the wheatons out of their BCM's, and there are breeders who don't. I fully agree and will take it one step further. From my observations, from where I sit, there are indeed two separate mindsets when it comes to breeding these BCM's. There are breeders who are very selective of their breeding stock and try to keep them pure, and improve on what they have. Great care is taken to keep good records of specific breeding with different roos, etc. Some are paying more attention to egg color over type, and vise versa, but in the end, these breeders are very selective in the stock that they are breeding.
Then there is the other "camp". These are breeders who are also using decent breeding stock, but are mixing lines and varieties, and basically "slinging stuff against the wall to see what sticks". I'm sure that a few quality birds can pop up from these crosses, but it's my opinion that the chance of more "hard to trace" faults are there too. Breeders from both camps are selling birds and hatching eggs, and it's not always easy to know which is which. That's why there are umpteen threads on here by new BCM people wondering why the BCM"
ebay" eggs that they hatched are throwing wheatons, or have white feathering, fused toes, unreconizeable coloring, etc. You get the drift.
I am not categorizing Greathorse into either of these camps, because the poster has disclosed her goals and intentions, and I'm not upset by any of it. I think it's great that she has a clear idea of where she is going with this and it will be a pretty cool, educational ride along the way. I don't condone any of the other comments in this thread that could, and should have been expressed differently by other posters. If I'm "upset" about anything, it's the fact that my road to developing quality BCM's could have been easier had a few breeders early on been a little more responsable in their breeding practices.
