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Origin: Great Britain

Category:: Hard feather

Egg Colour: Tinted

In the UK in 1849 an Act of Parliament was passed making cock fighting illegal in Britain, with poultry exhibitions then taking root, many breeders began to exhibit Game fowls.In the UK in about 1930 the Old English Game Club split as there was already a divergence of birds being shown with larger breasted, horizontally backed, exhibition type birds tending to win, and breeders of these formed the Carlisle Club. Breeders of the original type, wherein the back is at 45° to the ground, maintained the well-balanced, close heeled, athletic fighting fowl, and formed the Oxford Club. The judge of Oxfords does so with the bird facing away from him to assess balance. It is usually agreed that a good game fowl cannot be a bad colour.

In South Africa poor judging of Old English Game (OEG) fowl through the years resulted in departure from the true Oxford Old English Game type pit fowl by adding and exaggerating them with almost non-functional physical exaggerations that the birds did not originally possess. All this just for the show bench where it is to be looked at. This scenario also evolved in Australia and the USA. The Carlisle is a good example of how judges misguide exhibitors by losing focus on the (pit fowl) features and destroy a breed. The Oxford Old English Game was developed into a show fowl that deviates a lot from the original standard. This impact has been so great that not even the Carlisle has kept abreast with it’s breed standard. An example of this is the rather short feathered tail. The Carlisle Show Game is not capable of acquitting itself in the pit. It is an insult referring to the Carlisle Show Game as an “Old English Game”. It would be more correct to refer to it as Carlisle Game as for Modern Game and Indian Game.

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