Paul,

You have not rained on my parade. I welcome any, and all comments on the snakes I'm working with. However, I'm still confident that this is a simple recessive gene. I do understand what you are saying about breeding two of the normal looking babies together, that I say are 100% hets, and which I will do.

I have bred the original ugly pastel parents together two years in a row, and produced a Pastel Monarch, a Pastel Monarch Genetic Stripe, a Monarch, and a Monarch Genetic Stripe....wouldn't this lead one to believe that the parents are themselves in fact 100% hets, especially since they are not expressing anything other than pastel. Two years in a row they have produced Monarchs and Genetic Stripes, which makes them double hets. In all probability, it's not a dom, or co-dom gene, or the origianl parents would probably be expressing something besides pastel.

Then, I took the first baby, which is a Pastel Monarch and bred it to a normal.....results were, normals and pastels. Once again, the results are typical of a recessive gene.

Then, I bred this Pastel Monarch to a het albino, and the results were....normals, and pastels. Once again, this gene behaved like a simple recessive. Which would also make the babies 50% poss het for albino.

Then, I bred the same Pastel Monarch to Pastel, and the results were...normals, pastels, and super pastels. Once again, the gene behaved like we would expect a recessive gene to.

I'm not claiming to be an expert, but this Monarch gene has so far behaved like I would expect it to. I will be breeding either the Pastel Monarch or the Monarch Genetic Stripe back to the original female this year. At least for me, there is little doubt as to what the offspring will be...I'm certain there will be Monarchs.

I don't feel like I have to breed two normal babies 100% het for Monarch together to say beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is simple recessive gene.....because if I breed the Pastel Monarch, and the original female pastel together, then in essence, that is what I'm doing.

Once again Paul, thanks for the comments, they are always welcome.

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