Wednesday, September 22, 2010

It gets confusing with Mystery Clutches

Once upon a time, Heather bred some animals together, and used several males to one female.

"No problem", she thought. "It will be easy to figure out what is what, and the odds will be better for me"

She learned the hard way, and hopefully, you will learn from her mistakes.

Exhibit A:

MYSTERY males (several double co-dom males, including Pastel Lesser, Bumblebee, and others) to a large normal.

8 eggs, 3 slugs...

Hatched out??

8 NORMALS.

Impossible, one may think...

But nay, my friends, it is not. It is the luck of the draw, and she drew the joker, and he was pointing and laughing at Heather.


So she traversed on... with many mystery clutches to be had, she was still looking forward to other results.

Exhibit B:

Pastel Lesser or Sterling males to Black Pastel female.



Results look promising...

Silver Bullets, Pewters and Pastels.

But wait... one thing doesn't look right.

What is this???

Heather at first thought it was a Pewter... Now we all know that if it was a Pewter, we would not be discussing this issue at all.

It is a Black Pastel Lesser.

Heather mistook it for a Pewter. She even took it to the show and had it marked as a Pewter.

Shame on her.

Shame shame shame.


So remember, Mystery clutches do bode well, and do not. To be sure of what you are hatching and to pay attention to what it could be is KEY to breeding. 


I think that we are not going to be doing Mystery Clutches next season... Just to save me the headache.

So there you go. Learn and live and learn some more.

Hope this helps you all out, and have a fantastic day, my friends.

3 comments:

Jackie M. said...

how did you figure it out?

Unknown said...

LOL. When I brought it to the show, one of my friends who was helping asked me if I was sure it was a Pewter.

I checked it later, and realized it really wasn't, had to check the records, and saw that I paired the Pastel Lesser as well.

The rest is history.

Chris R said...

But at least you got a nice suprise on your clutch of 6/1/10 with the pair of pinstripes. I can see how you never really for sure know what all different genes could be present inside any given animal.