That was a long time ago Steve, and the memory fades. The two D.Q.'s that I see in my standard is the presence of "ear tuffs" (sic) and clean faces. The English Standard allowed for both muffs and ear tufts in the same bird, in fact I have seen many photos of birds in the U.K. that do. So we wanted to make double sure the lethal gene was not allowed here. From the beginning there were a lot of clean faced breeds used to create Ameraucanas, so a lot of heterozygosity was present in many of the original birds. The object, of course, was homozygosity in the finished product. As you know from reading the history, we were the object of some ridicule in the early years, so we didn't want a whole lot of variation when it came to the various traits, including skin color. We felt that uniformity was necessary to gain some respect, because a lot of mutts had been entered in shows before the Standard became a reality. Feel free to share. Maybe Jerry or John or someone else can add to what was said here.
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