Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm going to attempt to answer my own questions here, just looking for feedback to see if I'm on the right track:
1. Assume you have no known hets
2. If you breed male PosHet to female normal, best odds of getting homozygous is to breed male with his own daughters in 3 years, breeding siblings would reduce the odds of pairing up the hets (if any).
3. If you breed female PosHet to male normal, you would wait 2 years then breed one of her sons back to her. If no homozygous, then the next year try a different one of her sons with her, and pair up the siblings. (obviously I don't get my females to breeding size in 2 years)

I know the best solution (cheaper too!)is to go ahead and get a known het and find out (maybe) the first year you breed, but it's hard to justify additional snake purchases around here, I can get away with adding racks and keeping the offspring.
Thanks.
Paul

Your situation #1 (pos het male to a normal and keep the daughters) I think is the most common. That's what I'm doing anyway.

With piebalds I have three non sibling 50% chance het males (they actually belong to my sister). The first group of 3 daughters out of the oldest male will be big enough to breed this winter and crazy as it sounds I'm actually thinking of breeding them to one of the other 50% males and not their father. The down side to this approach is that then in order to produce piebalds both 50% males have to be hets rather than just one. The reason I'm thinking of doing it is to avoid inbreeding (I know some insist it doesn't hurt but my best corn snakes where the outbred ones so I'd like to outbreed just in case) and because I'm really suspecting that the male I want to use (not the father) is a het so at least the next generation of girls will have a good chance to be hets even if I don’t produce piebalds.

My hunch on the alternate male being het is based on the black lining at the edge of the belly. This is a controversial and unproven way that has been put forward to possibly identify SOME hets. It appears that lots of hets don’t have this and some non hets do so if it is a sporadic sign it’s not a very good one but I’m interested in testing it. I'll let everyone know how it works out next year.

Yeah,
I agree about the outbreeding. If I prove out one of my PosHets, I can justify purchasing or trading for a known het and go from there to keep a good genetic mix. I figure any morph has enough inbreeding in its lineage already and don't really want to exploit it any more than necessary to prove out a PosHet.
Thanks for the reply.
Paul