Here is one of my keepers this year.



One of her great great grandparents was a pied. Of course it will take me a few more years to get her up to size to see if my hunch that she has a better than 12.5% chance of being a het pied is accurate. Sure the marker could be a separate gene that has been passed down through 4 consecutive generations of outbreeding. However, to me it looks very pied like and I've seen pictures of some of her aunts that are so extreme markered with the white starting to move up the side that they could pass for low white pieds. Remember that pieds have white bellies and only vary by how much the white expands onto the back (or maybe more accurate to say how much the pigment doesn't extend down). Based on these observations I believe that the marker belly is an expression of a single pied mutation and not a separate gene. The guy I got her father from reports that all of his 25% chance het pied sisters with the markers have proven so technically my girl is now upgraded to 25% chance het pied since her aunts proved her 50% chance het pied markered grandfather.