Sorry for the late reply, I've been recovering from surgery...



If your main goal is to prove out the poss. het female, I'd definitely go with option C simply because your chances are much higher (50%) for producing more visual morphs if the female is in fact het whereas if you bred her to a het male (and she was also het), your chances or producing a visual are now just 25%. Always remember, Punnett square ratios are not 'hard' numbers per se, so you cannot rely on how many visuals you can produce based on the ratio.



Case in point: I bred an Anaconda male to a 100% het Amel female which produced Anacondas and Normals that were all 50% het Amel. Last year I bred one of those 50% het Amel Anaconda males back to his 100% het Amel mother and hatched out 8 eggs from that pairing. Out of those 8 eggs, I got 4 Anacondas 66% het Amel, 3 Normals 66% het Amel and 1 Amel. Now, according to the Punnett square, the ratio was correct for how many Normals and Anacondas I would produce which was a 50% ratio. However, the Punnett square ratio for producing Amels was 25% which determined that I should have produced 2 Amels out of the 8 eggs hatched instead of just 1 hatching out. I could have easily produced no Amels and then wrongly assumed that the father was not het Amel at all which would have been a false conclusion because I was basing my assumptions on higher expectations of producing an Amel.



The bottom line is, if you are wanting to prove out a possible het, the best method is to use a visual animal which gives you a much higher chance of proving out the possible het but even this does not guarantee that you will produce visuals in any one single breeding session; sometimes it can take multiple breedings until a visual is produced even with known 100% het animals bred to visual animals. Unfortunately, that's just the way it is with genetics. So always be prepared to minimize your expectations and assumptions, especially with the first couple of breeding productions.
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Troy Rexroth

Rextiles

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