Following an invite to Whiting Farms and seeing how the largest producer of Genetic Hackles in the world run their business and produce these Fantastic birds for the fly Tyer, I have decided to try and answer some of the questions that Fly Tyers keep asking and also give you some insight into what it takes to produce the Worlds finest Dry Fly Hackles.

The first thing you notice is the scale of the operation ... its MASSIVE! The birds are kept in 22 air conditioned buildings. Temperature and the lighting conditions are very important in producing these beautiful Dry Fly Capes and Saddles that Whiting has become famous for.

They have between 60,000 & 70,000 Birds at the ranches, ranging from chicks to breeding stock. They have 2 incubators, which hold 14,000 eggs each! I did say everything is on a massive scale. Within 8-9 hours of hatching the chicks are sexed with a 95% accuracy rate. Once the chicks leave the incubators they are placed in very clean nursery units called brooders.

Hygiene at Whiting Farms is very important. Chicks stay in their first building until they are 11-13 weeks old. Every body entering these buildings Must Walk through a disinfectant bath and Tom Whiting leads by example. Turn over in these buildings is quite fast, every 15 weeks, once the chicks leave the building they are cleaned top to bottom with disinfectant.

After 11-13 weeks the different types are separated, with the Whiting, Hebert & Coq de Leon Roosters being kept in separate sections of the buildings. Even at this early age the different types of chicks will fight. Whiting Roosters are the most timid, followed by the Heberts and then the Bully Boys of the chicken world the Coq de Leon Roosters.

Most birds molt twice a year, but not the Whiting birds. With the right conditions the Roosters can be encouraged to hold their feathers as they believe it to be Winter all the time. This keeps the feathers growing, the saddles never stop growing and the necks stop at 48 weeks, this being the age the roosters reach before they are harvested. Forty eight weeks is old for a rooster when you think your average Super Market meat bird will only be 6-10 weeks old. Hen birds are harvested at about 30 weeks.

I have never seen any man with so much passion for the work he loves - which is producing the finest dry fly hackles in the world ! Tom has total control of the breeding stock and personally selects the birds to be harvested. When the Whiting Staff go home, Tom Whiting will still be working in the buildings, introducing the very finest roosters that Whiting produces to pens of hen birds. This is what Tom Whiting is all about, making each Generation of dry fly hackle better than the last. His goal is to produce neck capes that tie 30+ to size 4 so that every feather on a Rooster cape can be used.

Dying and grading of the capes is carried out by Marti Rathburh, Marti is responsible for the fantastic range of new colours Whiting are now producing to suite your Fly tying needs from Bright Saltwater colours to Natural colours for your small dry flies. Having worked as a commercial artist and also winning many awards in the USA for his Wildlife Paintings Marti has an eye for detail and colour which helps him to blend the dyes to produce the perfect colours.

To secure the future of the Whiting flocks, Whiting have 4 different ranches spread around Delta in case of natural disasters. Each ranch has its own back up electricity generator in case of a power cut, with no heat control the birds would die within a few hours in the summer heat in Delta. With measures like these being taken fly Tyers around the world should always be able to obtain the finest hackles for many generations of fly Tyers to come.

Nigel Thompson
Lakeland Fly-Tying