Male vs. Female visuals/hets?

It really depends on where you want to go. I think for my breeding, I'm going to want mostly visual females, for the reasons listed above. Then, ideally I'd get a 2 or 3 gene male, either with one of those genes being the recessive het, or even not carrying the recessive, since you can make your own hets by breeding to her and then produce visuals a year later by growing up one of the sons. However, if funds are tight, you might decide to go with a visual male and a het female. Or, if space isn't tight, and you want to do several different projects with that recessive gene, getting several het females may be a better choice.

Thanks for all the tips! I can definitely see the benefits of a visual female on the eggs as a 'marketing' tool. Especially since I'll be brand new on the selling scene. I think I'll be starting out with visual males, just for cost consideration (though I'm sure I'll be getting some visual females in the future, just not for the next year or two). I'm willing to bear the cost of having one visual/one het, rather than having to make my own to continue the project. Its an interesting juggling act with time, money, and space all being factors.

With visual males, I like that I'd be able to pair a visual male with multiple females. Especially if they're good combos I can put them with a non-het female and I'll still have 100% het hatchlings with good visual genes. Though I did just put a deposit on a hypo pastel female > > The price was right and my birthday is soon, so I consider it a birthday purchase. I needed a pastel girl anyway, and the hypo is just the cherry on the cake. :)

visual females are quite useful, because males reach sexual maturity so fast that you can upgrade them rapidly.

lets say you have visual hypo females, and then a male mojave spinner (mojave spider pinstripe) that isnt even het anything.

now you hatch out things like jigsaw (mojave pinstripe) het hypo, or spinner het hypo. hold back the males, and they can be ready in less then a year. so you have a chance to hatch out visual hypo + nice extra genes in your second season. and in your third season, you can do visual male + extra genes to visual female.

upgrading the females takes much longer.

so i guess i would start with visual females, and with males that are 100% het and that do carry interesting extra genes.

with hypo its quite important to keep improving, because you see all the other genes. hypo jigsaw, hypo pewter, hypo bee, hypo kingpin, hypo mojave enchi, and also combos with other recessives like hypo pied and hypo clown, it all works really really well and its very visual.

Pricey Visual males to Het females... 1 Male to 3+ females.

only One female to 1 male (unless you play who's your daddy but then genetics are out of whack)

So thats why getting that power 3+gene male is worth while.