Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What are the odds of producing a super pastel from a pastel to pastel breeding?

thanks,
John

Expected results:
1/4 homozygous pastel (AKA super pastel)
2/4 heterozygous pastel (AKA pastel)
1/4 normal

Actual results may vary from the expected results.

Paul Hollander

And those are the odds per egg so your cumulative chance of producing at least one super pastel depends on the size of the clutch:

1 - (0.75)^n

where n is the number of eggs you hatch.

Basically this formula figures the odds of not producing any (.75 – the odds of each egg not being a super pastel - times it's self the number of eggs) and then subtracts that from 1 (i.e. 100%) since you can divide all your possibilities up into either producing at least one or not producing any.

So for a 6 egg clutch your odds of producing one or more super pastel is:

1 - (0.75)^6 = 82.2%

Note that this formula never quite goes to 100%. Even if you bred that pastel pair until they produced 100 babies you would still have a chance of not getting a super pastel, just a very small chance:

1 - (0.75)^100 = 99.99999999997%

That's only a 1 in 3 trillion chance of a miss producing at least 1 super pastel out of 100 babies from pastel X pastel but it COULD happen, it's just very very unlikely. The point is you are never guaranteed anything but the more eggs you hatch the better your chance.