Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Gosh, this thread title sounds a bit kinky, huh? I was just wondering why Piebald males are more expensive than females. Everywhere I look, the females seem to be more expensive in most morphs except for Piebalds. Why is that?

Chris

one reason is that you can breed one male to multiple females in a season thus producing alot (depending on the number of females and size of the clutches) of 100% hets.

I've also noticed that het piebald females seem rather close in price to actual piebald females.

My theory (I’ve never even seen a pied in person yet so take with a grain of salt) is that pieds have a reputation for being streaky eaters (or rather streaky not eaters) and this is more of a handicap for a female than a male which only has to get about 1/3 the size to breed. Perhaps the het females do better than the homozygous females.

I have seen well eating pied females. interesting though...I have never heard of pied females being picky eaters (nor can I understand it possible...I can see albino in ways being more picky feeders and more apt to live food due to poor eyesight. Maybe they just dont like eating mice with white spots : ) i think it is to do with being able to breed a male with many snakes and het. females are likely to be purchased because they can be bred to the pied male...I dont know how close in price they are as i have seen pied females under 5,000 but never seen a het. that high.

Have you ever seen a clutch from a female pied?

Apparently it can be done since the first clutch to prove piebalds genetic was from piebald X piebald.

Maybe there just aren't very many 5 year old female pieds yet (mutation was only proven 7 years ago). I think in general females of all types take longer to mature than people expect/hope. I just got the idea that big breeders where only keeping het females back for breeders for some reason.