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Posted by rtdunham on May 10, 2003 at 00:39:01:
In Reply to: Terry, opinion please posted by BrianS. on May 06, 2003 at 00:20:45:
Brian,
1) I'm assuming by "two years old" you mean the male is an '01 hatch?
2) I've had some 2 yr olds and even 3 yr olds simply not show much interest in breeding, or on a couple of occasions, breed but introduce no viable sperm during copulation (I express a sample after each breeding and check it out on a microscope). So a lot can be going on that doesn't (usually) meet the eye.
3) Why not use the het male THIS year? Not sure why you'd need to wait til next year.
4) With a new untested male, and if I didn't have a microscope to check sperm, i'd have probably bred the albino X the females 3 or 4 times and then backed up those breedings with a breeding or two X the het male...the logic being, young male, unproven, a little on the small size, and a proven high-fertility older male, hedge your bets: If the albino's fertile, his sperm would father most of the babies and you'd get a higher numberr of albinos; but if he's NOT viable this year, using the het backup would still get you SOME albinos at least. Main downside is that you'd have to call the wild-types POSSIBLE hets, not definite hets as would be the case if you used only the albino male. That seems like a reasonable tradeoff for insuring the odds of getting at least some albinos.
Bottom line is you can NOT count on any given male being fertile. I work with five to eight males each year, and typically there's one or two, among the younger ones, that simply don't do the job.
Peace...and good luck!
Terry
