Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm looking to breed my pastel male.
I went to the pet store and they have normal females but they said the father was 100% pied. (This is a low-buget store and they had no idea what this meant) They babies are $100 and I'm trying to figure out if its worth the gamble.

What would I get out of breeding a pastel with a het pied?
I heard pastel was co-dom, and pied is ressessive so I've been trying to do my punnet squares. Can anybody help? Is there such thing as Pastel Pied?? (I think they would be awesome) Thanks for any input

If the store had no idea what it meant I would worry that they might not be right about what they have. But if you believe that the father was a 100% het pied then that makes these females 50% chance het pieds. However, there is some evidence that some het pieds can be detected on sight based on having a 3 scale wide white belly with thick dark stripes at the edges of the belly. Perhaps the producer kept the girls with that marking and only sold the more normal looking ones to the pet store. If there is anything to the marker (and I believe there is) then the chance of the ones without it being hets after the ones with it are picked out is lower than 50%.

Your pastel is heterozygous for the pastel gene (has one normal copy of the pastel gene and one pastel mutant copy).

The square for breeding a pastel to a het pied would be like any cross between hets of two different genes (proven different genes by pastel pieds produced already). The babies would have an independent (assuming pastel and pied probably not linked on a common chromosome, again from the production of pastel pieds already) 50% chance of being het piebald and a 50% chance of being pastel. The combined chance of being both would be 25%. However, a pastel het pied might be more likely to display signs of carrying the pied gene than a non pastel het pied (pastel has been reported to make some odd looking double hets when combined with some “recessive” genes) so you might be able to pick any pastel het pied out of the pastel half of the clutch (if you are luck and one is there to find).

Thanks so much...I think we might keep looking. but on that note what if we save up and got a visible pied morph female...Pastel pied is proven (?) so there would be a good chance of getting one if I bred both visible morphs.

(thanks again your answer saved us some money)

if you had a pie and breed it to your pastel you would get pastels and norms het for pie ball no pastel pieds you would have to breed the babies together to get a pastel pie.
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Vince Pramuk

I doubt the females are hets. Pet stores usually buy snakes at wholesale prices, which means they probably got them for much less than $100. The fact that they know nothing about genetics or morphs is scary...If we were talking about males it would be more likely males 100% het pied are cheaper and 50%hets could be around a pet stores budget. That price seems way to low for females 50% hets I’m not sure but 100% het pied females I think they sell around $1000. I really don't think anyone would even sell females possible het pied to a pet store.

I think it is possible that someone would move some extra animals through the pet store. I work a deal with the lady in the pet store by me similar to this. She sells them for me or we trade retail...etc.

I blow stuff out there much cheaper than they sell for on this site, plus theres no shipping. I dont want the headache of shipping and I am really not in the snake selling buisiness, so I think its not impossible what you wrote.

If I were you, I would buy 2 females and try to get them for $175 or so. You can then find a 100% male for around $100 and you would have a nice little Pied project going? Youd be able to breed the male sooner, you would know for certain (if you buy him from a reliable source) that he is 100 percent so that would take some confusion out of the mix.

And, at the end of the day, the worst you could do is have 2 normal females and a 100percent Pied male for a total cost of $250-$300 dollars? That wouldnt kill you financially and the females are always in demand.

Signed,

F.GUMP

on the upside, you might (just think about that!!) end up with 1 or 2 100percent Pied feamles and a 100percent Pied male and really be loving the decision you made 2 or 3years from now....