Super firefly pied

[kc261]

LOL! I have a pied male & a bp pewter males both mating with a pied female to double my chances & not rely on one male, will either get pieds or pewter, black pastel, pastel normal het pieds...have done the same with two pastel girls so options will be silver streak, pewter, super pastel, black pastel or pastels..or pastel het pieds..will be holding any hets that may be produced for future plans..

On the clutches from the pastel females, you won't be able to know if the babies are hets or not, because you won't be able to know which is the father. Obviously the clutch from the pied female will all be 100% hets (or visual pieds) regardless of the father.

Here is the problem.

pewter x pastel can yield:
normal
pastel
super pastel
cinnamon
pewter
sterling

pied x pastel can yield:
normal het pied
pastel het pied

So, you will know that any super pastels, cinnamons, pewters, or sterlings are NOT het pied, but any normals or pastels could be from either father, so they might or might not be hets.

This is why it is not recommended to use multiple males when one of the males is a recessive morph. You can't know which babies are hets and which aren't. There are exceptions, but you have to be extremely careful about that type of pairings. For example, in your first pairing, since the female is pied, you'll know all babies are at least het pied if not visual, so multiple fathers doesn't matter. Another possibility is to have the other possible father be a super form of a co-dom morph that is not carried by the female. With your pastel females, if the father other than the pied had been a super pastel, you still could not know if any pastel hatchlings were het pied or not, because they could have come from the super pastel father, or from the pied father and the pastel mother. At least in that case you would know any normals were het pied. However, you could have used a super cinnamon as the second father. That way, any cinnamons or pewters would not be het pied, but any pastels or normals would be het pied.