Reptile & Amphibian Forums

ok, so i'm not ready to do any breeding right now and have a lot to learn before i embark on something like this but i have been reading all these posts and such and wanted to be sure i had this right....

if i breed a 100% HET to a normal they would all be 100% het babies? and then i would need to breed one of those back to the original to get the HET to show itself?

No, because only one of the parents carry the het gene the babies only have a 50/50 shot at carrying the het gene. The only way to get 100% hets is to breed a visual morph to either a normal or a het.
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John Vandegrift

thanks John! So i would have to have a pair of 100% hets to get the visual morph?

at the very least you would have to have a pair of hets to get the morph...thats not saying that some of the 50% or 66% wont be hets but you would have to prove them out...the number (i.e. 100%, 50%, 66%, 33%...ect) is just the chance that the animal will be a het. but it either is or isnt....say you have a female 50% het that you breed to a visual or a 100% het and produce the visual morph, that female 50% het is no longer a 50% het..it is just a het because you proved her out to be heterozygous for that trait. I know I tend to ramble and confuse but I hope this helps...if not go to your favorite search engine and search for a punnit square and it will help you out with genetics greatly (at least it did in my case) especially if the site has to do with bps or snakes in general.

google a "Punnett Square"

Punnett squares are named for the guy who first developed this approach to understanding the inheritance of simple traits (those which are controlled by one pair of alleles) - which are typically what we see in the reptile trade.

Good luck!

~Rebecca
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0.1 Dumeril's Boa '04 (Courtney)
1.2 Ball Pythons
[1.0 '05 Orange Hypo (Specter)]
[0.1 '05 Het Orange Hypo (Sylvia)]
[0.1 '03 Normal (Sue)]
0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs:Brandy&Mara)