(04-24-2014 09:39 AM)Karloff Foehammer Wrote: I have a couple lines that are semi-pure going back at least a generation or two on each side and once in a while still get a random fur that i wasn't expecting.
What is happening here is that even if both parents may have the same fur on the immediate pedigree, they both are hiding a more recessive fur that has been passed along for several generations.
So you can know that they aren't pure.
Also the surprise fur isn't random; whatever hidden furs there are remain constant but there is just much less chance of these two hiddens "pulling" each other than there is for the shown fur to be produced.
This is in fact why it's a bit dicy to claim any trait as being pure. Unless you've bred the lines from the very beginning or can trace back all the pedigrees then there's no way of knowing for sure.
Jumping in the deep end...
