we have two bantam roosters that are coming into their own (crowing all the time, causing problems with the hens). One is cream colored with black centers to the feathers, similar to a badger hackle, and one is a brown color with a black center. However, on the saddles of both roosters, the black area down the center of the feather has a metallic green sheen. So I want to know, what would you tie with these feathers???
Yes.
The brown with a black centre sounds like a furnace.
A very useful cockerel hackle. The badger type you can try colouring the feathers with a pentel pen to what you fancy. Have look through dry fly patterns.
Could you post a picture please 
Joe
Are you going to let them molt and then pluck the feathers, or are you planning on killing two birds with one stone (ugh) and solving the noise problem as well?
I used to buy roosters from farmyard flocks and I would never buy one less than two years old if I wanted the hackle for dry flies. It was amazing how cheaply I could buy old roosters which were deemed, quite correctly, to be all but inedible. The drawback was the time that I did this while living in the frat house…
I’d tie anything I could with them.
If the barbs were stiff enough for dry flies, then I’d use the cape for those. If not, then for streamer wings, hackle tip wings on dries, etc…
The saddles would work for buggers, certainly, and mabe dries depending on barb quality. Or at least for tails on poppers and such.
Wouldn’t waste any of it. (color isn’t critical as hackle or much else, for that matter. The color they are is fine for most things)
Good luck!
Buddy
I’ll go take some pics now, but I am not sure how to post pics here. Both of them are about 16 weeks old. I have skinned a few roosters in the past, but I don’t think I waited long enogh, I recently saw one of the siblings,(about a year old) and the saddles on him are amazing!! I’ll go get a few pics and see if I can post them
I got some fairlly good pics, if you are really interested in seeing them, PM me and I’ll e-mail them to you
If the hackles are good as they sound, it might be worth feeding them for a couple more years and getting even better.
If you do, as a bonus, I’ll send you the traditional recipe for Cockaleekie soup, which was the usual fate of unwanted roosters here in Scotland. 
I think I’ll keep them for a little while longer.(as long as they don’t terorize the hens, we have another guy who had been removed from the general population) When I look at the pics I took I can really see the metallic colors, and maybe the potential for some salt water streamers…Send me that recipie!!
Donald, at the risk of hijacking this thread, why don’t you submit the recipe for cockaleekie soup for inclusion in the recipe section of FAOL?
Ed
I had a quick Google and this is what I found,
Mrs Beetons Soups Revisited
Commonly called Cock-a-Leekie
1 Capon or Large Fowl (sometimes an old cock, from which the recipe takes its name, is used), trussed for boiling
5.7lt (10 pints) Medium Stock
2-3 Bunches Leeks
Salt and Pepper, to taste
Wash the leeks (and if old, scald them in boiling water for a few minutes), remove the roots and part of the heads and cut them into lengths of about 2.5cm (1 inch).
Put the fowl into the stock, with half of the leeks and allow to simmer gently.
After 30 minutes add the remaining leeks.
Simmer for 3 or 4 hours longer.
It should be carefully skimmed and can be seasoned to taste.
In serving, take out the fowl and carve it neatly, placing the pieces in a tureen and pouring over them the soup, which should be very thick of leeks (a pur?e of leeks the French would call it).
Time: 4 hours.
Sufficient for 10 persons.
Seasonable in winter.
Note: Without the fowl, the above, which would then be merely called leek soup, is very good and also economical.
Cock-a-leekie was largely consumed at the Burns Centenary Festival at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, in 1859.
It is ridiculous the recipe has been bowdlerised.
Here is the unaltered version -
http://thefoody.com/mrsbsoups/cockaleekie.html
Check the pints, probably British, go by the litres.
Thank you, Donald.
That might be a good recipe for a crock pot. Of course, we aren’t quite as rich in leeks as the British Isles, but we can find them.
Ed
And now Donald you will be remembering the Pea and Ham made out of chicken advert. Moira was a braw wee hen. :lol:
Good drop of stuff that cock a leekie by the way at the start of the season out in a boat.
How about a Matuka streamer? With that green sheen the fly would be gorgeous.
I remember it well Fa’kirk. Pea and Ham is no’ sae bad either.
Well folks, now you’ve got two of us using these funny words. :lol: