If I had to make comparison with my two breeds.....all girls
VS the SSHB spangling pattern...
There are alot of similiarity of the spangling. Except for the Spitz roo, which Gabbard told me his feather pattern is correct. Supposed to have the crescent shape pattern but it is so difficult to produce without going to laced pattern on future chicks. In the UK, they said spangle is half moon crescent shaped.
The Complete Encyclopedia of Chickens by Esther Verhoef and Aad Rijs distinguishes the difference between spangled and half-moon spangled.
"At the tip of the feather, there is a rather large, rounded black spot, known as a 'spangle'. A variant of spangled is half-moon spangled. Here, the spangles are not of a neat round shape, but more crescentic." Under the Brabanter section, the book says Brabanters should have half-moon spangles.
Unfortunately there is not a section on Spitzhaubens, but the UK standard for silver says " Pure silvery white ground colour, with each feather ending in distinct black, fairly small spangle, not circular."
Most of my Spitz' spangles appear more tear drop shaped, but I used to have a hen with distinct heart shaped spangles. Go figure. What a mess.
Flitter,
You need to weed out your birds with crest feathers growing backward. I would pick a roo with a spastic crest over one growing backward. #1 & #3 are my choices.
I know, its a mess! I do hope we will get better with alot of culling to do and LOTS of birds to breed. Consisency is going to be a problem with our future birds.
So I started thinking about the other thread with the mention of the Spitz, and got some shots of my Nikki Sixx. He had all the girls preen him to baldness, and is just getting his hairdo back with this molt.