Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm getting 2 adult male 50% het Pieds on Friday. They're basically just extras in a group deal and I don't really need them. But I believe I've read about het pieds having markers on them. I'm not much of a pied fan at all so I didn't retain much of it. Could someone tell me if that's true or if I just imagined it? And if it is true, what kind of defining "markers" should I look for when they get here? I really appreciate any comments. Thanks alot. Ryan.

No such thing as a marker for het pieds and don't let anyone tell you otherwise...

Corey Woods has posted and I've seen a quote from Peter Kahl that they can identify 70-80% of het pieds by appearance. The problem is the 20-30% that don't have the nearly of full 3 scale wide white belly with thick black straight connected black lines at the edge - particularly in the last 1/3 of the snake.

There are also reports of presumed non het pieds having similar marks but from the ch and pet store animals I've looked at I believe the percentage that are good examples is very low and perhaps close to the actual percentage of random het pieds in the wild. Others have reported seeing much higher percentages in presumed non het pieds so I suspect that either they are defining the mark more loosely than I or my sample is biased by having the markers picked out by the time I see them.

If it where the perfect system ware all het pieds had the marker and no non het pieds had it then we could classify the piebald as fully co-dominant but nature wasn’t that considerate to help us avoid confusion.

Randy,

Your imput is always very rewarding to read and most educative, however, has Pete ever mentioned to you that he bred one of his homo pieds to many, many 66% Het-Pieds that had these supposed marker belly stripes he produced himself resulting in a truck load of hets, no visible pieds?

If that does not put to rest this BS Het Pied marker scam, I don't know what will...

Lets call a spade a spade...isn't there enough confusion out there with all the other marker traits!

Brian A.

a very small, unproven sign to look for that could maybe point you in the right direction with breeding. Thanks alot for the info.

I wonder if one of Petes original normal females had this trait and it was passed on to the hets as co-dom. If this was the cause it would explain why some of the hets have the marker and others dont.

It would also explain how a poss het that has the trait might not prove.

Whatever it is there have been a number of breeders that have bought poss hets from Pete with the marker traits and have had great odds in proving them to be het.

I sure do hope that the trait has something to with the pied gene since I have about 7 poss het females with the trait.

Only way to really know is to breed them and prove them. Just adds a little more hope.........

Raul

Since most folks are going to use females that have the markers(ch and ltc most likely)with their het pied male.Then it also makes you wonder about all the future generations of possible hets.
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Charles Glaspie

So was the quote that he can identify 70% of hets not legitimate or is he looking at a different marker? I've only ever spoken to him briefly about 11 years ago and never about pieds.

Was the "homo pied" captive bred and has it ever produced pieds with the cb line?