I tried the link and it didn't work for me. Darn.
Desert Marcy: I have two thoughts here. One is to go with your biggest birds period as type is hardest to breed for (other than eggs of course) and the second thought is that spangling takes more than a year. I was outside yesterday afternoon with one of my two year old girls and didn't even recognize her out of this last molt! She has huge muffs and deep color and nice splangling... if it weren't for her feet she'd be great! Most heritage birds develop slowly, especially the markings like this. So, don't worry about who has the best right now.
I guess I will throw one more penny on the heap by saying that I love the white primaries. I don't have a single bird with them but the artwork which portrays them with it is just stunning! You might have something worth keeping.... just saying.
I personally like seeing the white on the birds and have kept several like that for my layer pen, but my understanding is they are not supposed to have any white more than--what is it--an inch? So a solid white primary is definitely out. I hear what you are saying about breeding for type, though. My plan for this coming breeding is to breed my nice dark male from my original group back to this year's pullets plus there are 2 hens from the original group that are nice and hold these other 2 males in reserve. I need to test this male and make sure his fertility is good. I had some questions about it since when I first started breeding the Orloffs with my starter flock, I had all 3 cockerels in the pen. Fertility was 100%. Then I took out the 2 that had too much white and left in the nicest one. Well fertility gradually dropped off to like 30%. I theorized that the other males' sperm was gradually losing potency and that the male I had in the pen wasn't working. I hope this male is good, because he is really nice and he is big.
