Thoughts on Dom female vs co dom female

[Russ Lawson]

If the dominant female is replacing or backing up a normal female, I see no harm in having one. Personally, I think they are particularly nice for having to breed to recessive males for starting combo recessive/dominant projects. Even then, it's probably better to wait until you have a bit more money, and buy the dominant female het whatever recessive mutation you are planning on crossing her with so you can get the combo in the first year.

Really in the end though, it all depends on what projects you are wanting to work on. I personally eventually plan on buying a female spinner to breed recessive males to (or maybe even a couple spinner females het albino, hypo, axanthic, etc. depending on where I am in a couple years). I would feel somewhat limited by dominant males because while you can breed them to multiple females, you are basically keeping those females out of any other projects you could be doing. Also, because the homozygous and heterozygous dominant phenotype is identical, not only can you not tell any homozygous or heterozygous animals apart, but also you can only really go for combos with them. With codominant mutations, you can go for the homozygous genotype, which has a more extreme phenotype, and thus demands a higher price