Genetic Hackle

How selection and breeding have improved hackle quality

by Ross Purnell

Fly Article | Presentation | Fly Tying Materials

Dailey has also made great strides with the Metz necks, greatly increasing both the feather count and length. The necks also have much smaller hackle sizes on them. Now a premium neck has #26-#32 hackle.

Keough. In 1991, Bill Keough bought the stock of Colorado Quality Hackle, tapping into the Miner/Darbee line, and improved his previous selection of natural colors. Keough now has 14 of Andy Miner’s natural colors such as light dun, dun grizzly, and badger.

Over the last 20 years, he has greatly improved his hackle quality and his product has become very popular with tiers looking for less costly capes and saddles. Many consider his feathers the best value in a cape. While other breeders have been chasing the Holy Grail of small saddle hackle, Keough has found a market for saddles with large hackle sizes (#8-#12), perfect for tying big, bushy-looking dry flies.

Keough is also breeding chickens to produce hackle for saltwater and warmwater applications—long, wide, webby neck hackle that can be used to produce baitfish imitations and bass poppers.

Collins Hackle Farm. Charlie Collins started breeding hackle chickens in 1980, using stock from Andy Miner, Harry Darbee, and Dick Bitner. Collins’s main genetic emphasis is in breeding birds with thin, flexible quills that wrap true and don’t split or twist. “If you can’t wrap the feather, all the other hackle traits are worthless,” he says. “No trait is more important than quill quality.”

Collins has a relatively small operation, hatching from 4,000 to 8,000 chicks annually at his farm in Pine City, New York. He breeds for neck qualities exclusively and doesn’t sell his saddles individually—he includes them with his necks. For about $50, you can purchase a top grade neck and saddle directly from Charlie. He has a wide array of natural colors passed down from the Miner stock (Bitner raised grizzly almost exclusively) and is especially proud of his colored barred stock, which many tiers admire because of its buggy appearance and stiffness.

Collins’ avows his approach is nonscientific compared to a large-scale producer such as Whiting or Metz. He approaches his hackle herding in the old-school manner, producing feathers that are very desireable for traditional Catskill tiers. He has walked the fine line between advancing hackle quality and retaining some of the feather characteristics that appeal to traditional Catskill tiers who don’t necessarily want densely hackled flies.

While large-scale growers such as Whiting and Metz micro-monitor each chicken’s environment, interestingly, Collins takes an almost exact opposite approach. Collins feels that his hearty strain of mountain-bred bird is not only truer to the backyard breeders of the Catskill era, but also makes for a healthy, strong, and relatively disease-free flock.

Ross Purnell is Director of Web Content for the Virtual Fly Shop. He lives in Ft. Collins, Colorado.

Whiting Farms, Inc.

PO Box 100

Delta, CO 81416

(888) 321-0003

Metz Feathers

PO Box 892

Belleville, PA 17004

(877) 777-6389

Keough Hackle

23392 Hwy. M-60

Mendon, MI 49072