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Large feather rooster saddles are different beasts. Here are some tips on buying them.

Some tips on getting your hands on good skin bits

Even though the marabou is a large African stork and the marabou feathers indeed used to come from this bird, the marabou feathers of today come almost exclusively from turkeys and chickens.
The marabou stork (Leptoptilos crumeniferus) is actually on the CITES list of protected animals, and feathers from this bird should not be traded or used for fly-tying or anything else.
What we're dealing with in fly-tying is mainly turkey feathers. Chicken feathers can be found, but are not nearly as often labeled marabou.

The soft hackle is supposed to be - as the name implies - soft. Soft hackle can come from many birds. Chickens, gamebirds like partridge, grouse and quail, pheasant and even crows and jackdaws.

When you buy feathers for hackling dry flies, you essentially have two choices: necks or saddles. Necks used to be the thing to go for, but these days genetic hackle has made up for the difference, and oftentimes saddle hackle will actually be a better and more economical choice. You simply get more feather for your money.

Bucktails are a very useful, inexpensive and easily accessible material, which is very useful for people tying larger flies like pike flies and saltwater flies, as well as people tying streamers of all kinds.

Bucktails are available in natural colors (white and brown) as well as almost any dyed color you can imagine.

This article is about buying fly-tying materials. Lately when I have been shopping I have noticed a large difference in quality - even between materials of the same brand and price. Looking thoroughly can make a big difference. The same product from the same manufacturer at the same price can vary, and knowing what to look for can mean getting good and useful, and not the downright lousy.

I have always been annoyed by most commercially available zonker strips. Most of them are far too large and long haired for my use. 90% of all available strips are cut from rabbit, and in most cases they are both too wide in the skin and too long haired for anything but larger flies.