Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello all,

I am new to this forum and new to Ball Pythons but I have been keeping Green Tree Pythons for a while.. I have a question on genetics. What are the chances of getting a Albino if you breed a 100%het to 100%het? I have read abunch of articals and they all give % on the chances but from experience if you have a 1.1 100%het albino and 1.1 100%het pieball if I breed these pairs what are the chances of getting either a Albino or a Pieball?

Thanks in advance,
Angelo

Sorry, Piebald!

The short answer is that when breeding heterozygous animals each baby has an independent 25% chance of being homozygous.

Below is a link to a page where I have made a table of the odds of getting at least one albino or pied from breeding hets for a number of possible clutch sizes.
Odds Page

That is wild.. So I have "ABOUT" a 68% chance with 4 eggs to get a winner.. So if I wanted to start a breeding project and get into moderate Ball breeding what in your opinion would be the best way? I have 1.1 albino 100%het and 1.1 piebald 100%het..

Thanks,
Angelo

I'd mate heterozygous albino to heterozygous albino and heterozygous pied to heterozygous pied. That gives you a pretty good chance of something good in the first year of breeding. Mating a heterozygous pied to a heterozygous albino to go for an albino pied would give each baby a 25% chance of being the double heterozygote. And you have no way of telling the babies' genotypes without raising and breeding them.

Besides, I don't think an albino pied would be more impressive than the single mutants.

Paul Hollander

Keep in mind that if you breed a 100% pied to a 100% albino, you will in no way create either a pied or an albino (unless the off-chance that one of the parents also happened to be het for the other trait). In that case, you would get babies that would each be 50% het for both traits (if I'm not mistaken). You would then need to wait 2-3 years and breed those babies back to either the parents or to the other siblings. The only reason I'd suggest this is if you were looking to produce an albino pied. If you just want to produce morphs, breed the 100%ers to each other and take your 25% change of creating a morph. A reasonable clutch would be 4-6 eggs so assuming they're fertile and incubated well, you have a great chance of hitting the numbers and producing one or more of each.
Good luck,
Jason @ Jason's Jungle

that a 100% albino was an albino and a 100% pied was a pied.

Paul Hollander

HAHAHA! I was typing fast and forgot the word 'het' before each of those. What a difference that makes huh?
Jason