He's a backyard roo - not a show bird, nor close to it. Wouldnt you say thats the largest pea comb you've seen!! :-P
I'm developing a partridge araucana
which doesnt have a topnot "crest" - so, he is very early on in my breeding program, well aware of his standards flaws - but very excited to work on this colour within the breed.
Of course. He still has the pea comb. The blue egg gene is directly linked to a pea comb.
In fact, if you cross an araucana out with normal chickens, it takes 4 generations of not crossing back to araucana before the egg loses its blue and starts to go olive/green in colour. So, the initial crossout to get the partridge in and then crossing back to a purebred black araucana (which gives 50% black and 50% partridge offspring) has only strengthened the line. 4 generations back to purebred and I'll have a to standard araucana again - any single combs just get rehomed along the way as they wont be the blue egg layers.
As you are aware of his flaws I wont bother pointing them out, but I wish you luck in developing this line. I love the rare brown and red I occasionally glimpse in my mixed colour araucanas. Do you expect trouble in returning the solid slate leg colouring to the eventual line? That as been one work in progress with my own lavender araucanas, I find once you have the lighter colour in the breeding somewhere the offspring only sparingly have entirely correct leg colour.
I guess its those ones that you're breeding for. Having the black to cross back to is the lifesaver of the slate leg genes. Its the beard that I'm more concerning myself with in this next generation.