Want to get into making Pieds, but I have questions...

[Pythonfriend]

Basically, I understand that everyone says "the male should be more valuable that the female"... but WHY? What is it that I'm missing in the genetic puzzle?

Its most obvious in dominant / codominant morphs. And its most obvious when starting a breeding project.

Example 1: You breed a spinnerblast male to 3 females: pastel, pastel, and pastel.

Example 2: You breed a pastel male to 3 females: 3x spinnerblast.

in both cases you get exactly the same offspring, the same clutches. But the BPs in example 2 are easily 3 times or 4 times more expensive than those used in example 1. A female spinnerblast is worth much more than a male, and you need 3 times more of these for the same result. The effectivity of the male is tripled because it is being bred to 3 females.

But exceptions can sort of just happen. like, for example, you breed a cinnamon pied male to an albino female to start a double recessive project, and you happen to hit male regular double-hets and female cinnamon double-hets. Now it makes sense to just take it as it is and breed them, instead of frantically searching for a male double het albino pied with some codominant extra genes. The same is true when you breed codominant/dominant two-gene males to your single gene and normal females, and all the triple genes you hatch are female.

Its a rule of thumb; breeding a pastel male to a lemonblast or bee female would basically always be a mistake, but when its about recessive projects or even double recessive projects or when the odd gods just keep giving you powerhouse females and no equally powerful males the rule can go right out of the window.