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Wynette, what I see is a hen with extra coppering in breast area and she does have a pinched tail. Notice the brown soft feathers below the vent, That is what you usually get when they are mostly brown as young started chicks. I have some justlike her.
I thought the photo just had a bad case of red tint due to lighting - everything looked reddish/brownish. Wynette, are the feathers under the vent area really brown or just the photo? And I can't tell if her coloring is copper or red - I assumed copper (though it looked dark red) But I do have a question. Based on the dark roo, posted below by Wynette, who, to me, seems too dark and not enough copper - if bred to a dark red female - wouln't you get more chicks that are too dark? Of course, "too dark" is like beauty - in the eye of the beholder. I'm favorable to copper - but more like a recent issue copper penny - not the shiny metalic new copper penny look or the old dark red/brown copper penny - but the somewhere in the middle "copper" coloring.
I'm trying to figure out who to breed to whom and what is the "preferred" color. I have some that are very dark, what I would call mahogany, and most are definitely "copper", some are more "gold", and some I would call "red". I also have a question about how far the color should come down the chest on the hens. I read somewhere that the judges prefer more color and are awarding ribbons to the hens with the extra color (even if it's not part of APA - which I've lost track of whether or not it is mentioned in proposed APA). I posted a pic of a hen a few pages back that had what I thought was "mossy" on it's chest and I think Don called it something else.
What I do know, is that there has been so much "detail" pointed out lately that we have to look for/breed for that I'm losing track of it all. I do wonder if any bird will ever conform to the "total picture" and if most don't, then why is it the "standard" and not the "rare exception of perfection"???? For the life of me, I can't figure out how something like leg color can go from "dark slate" to "white" in proposed standards. I mean that is literally a difference of black and white. Seems like every time I think I know which birds should be used in a breeding pen, I learn something different that rules them out. Good thing I've got at least one of each.
