Quote Originally Posted by Gloryhound View Post
The biggest problem is you have no idea who has what genes. Since you don't have a known double to prove against it makes it a long process of breeding this and that with hits and misses and even if you have a male and female double het pied X Albino you only have a 1 in 16 chance of having them make the Albino Pied. Generally speaking the best way to make that combo is breed an Albino to a Pied then you know all the offspring are double het. Your idea is kinda the long version of the current situation I am in. I have a male double het for VPI snow that is old enough to breed, but I only have Normal females that are old enough to breed. I will breed him to at least one of the normal females and have a 25% chance of making a double het, 25% chance of het Albino only, 25% chance of het VPI Axanthic, and 25% chance of normals. The females will be bred back to their father in an attempt to prove what genes they actually have. This creates a 4 year project in the least to have the possibility of making a snow.

The big question is how many times do I breed the females back to the dad to know what each female really has? If the odds are against you all normals could be born the first time from the one female that is actually the double het.

Lucky for me I have a back up plan in motion with an Albino female that should be big enough in about 18 months to breed and a Het Axanthic Female in the same boat. Using these females in our second breeding cycle while the first batch of hatchlings are growing up will give me a better chance of producing double hets with some of them actually being Homo for one of the recessive genes and het for the second. At least this way I know one of the genes is pressent and if they are double hets it moves the odds to 1 in 8 of producing the snow! Since these girls are to small to breed this year, so going this route will be a 5 years or so project.

The genetics used to be pretty confusing until I started actually sitting down and just working through them. After 30 or 40 Punnett squares I have gotten pretty good at them.
i wish you good luck in your quest for the snow bp but as for now my mind has been boggled by genetics