In this case we are talking about the piebald gene. You need to know that there are some of us who believe that piebald has co-dominant tendencies and that many het pieds can be identified visually. There is good precedence for sporadic visible hets of some "recessive" morphs where some hets look part way between the normal and the homozygous. In Burmese pythons some green and granite hets are cinnamon and puzzle which have definite green and granite tendencies respectively. To me the ringer belly on many het pieds looks like pied starting to creep up from the belly.

So, do I wait to produce a homozygous pied and grow it up to breeding size before I start a pastel pied project or do I cross a nice ringer bellied possible het pied female to a pastel a year or three earlier?

But this opens a whole new can of worms. I'm not sure if you can see the ringer belly in combination with the already white belly of a pastel but what if you can? Did the breeder keep pastels that looked more likely to be het pied and only sell the ones that looked less likely? I haven't seen the add that started this and don't know who the seller was so nothing about them personally just a general question to consider for this situation. And as long as the selection process was disclosed so that the buyer could decide if the odds where even less than 25% then even this situation would be legit.

I did see a picture of an awesome adherent patterned pastel het pied once but I think I've also seen a pic of one that at least dorsally looked pretty typical pastel. I've also heard that het striped pastels tend to look different than normal pastels so it could be that pastel tends to accentuate any co-dominant tendencies in at least some of the "recessive" morphs.

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