Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After how many eggs do you consider a poss het a normal? Just looking for some input. I've got 9 eggs from what is suppose to be a 100% het I got in trade (so I'm treating it like a poss het), and 5 eggs each from two other poss hets. All bred to homozygous males.

Thanks.

Chris

As is always true, but if breeding to homozygous males, and you have decent size clutches and produce no homozygous babies after 2 or 3 seasons, well.....

It all comes down to odds and your judgment call if they aren't hets or there is some other explanation (incompatible lines, pathogenesis, retained sperm, male is a chimera, disproportionate death of homozygous embryos, or something we don't understand about python reproduction). Here is how the odds break down excluding unexpected explanations:

Hom X Het Eggs----------Missing 1 in ?---% Not Mis
1-----------------------------------2--------------------50.0000%
2-----------------------------------4--------------------75.0000%
3-----------------------------------8--------------------87.5000%
4-----------------------------------16-------------------93.7500%
5-----------------------------------32-------------------96.8750%
6-----------------------------------64-------------------98.4375%
7-----------------------------------128------------------99.2188%
8-----------------------------------256------------------99.6094%
9-----------------------------------512------------------99.8047%
10----------------------------------1,024----------------99.9023%
11----------------------------------2,048----------------99.9512%
12----------------------------------4,096----------------99.9756%
13----------------------------------8,192----------------99.9878%
14----------------------------------16,384---------------99.9939%
15----------------------------------32,768---------------99.9969%
16----------------------------------65,536---------------99.9985%
17----------------------------------131,072--------------99.9992%
18----------------------------------262,144--------------99.9996%
19----------------------------------524,288--------------99.9998%
20----------------------------------1,048,576------------99.9999%

So, for your 5 egg clutches are you the unlucky 1 in 32 that missed your 96.875% chance of producing at least one homozygous? People buy lotto tickets all the time at less than 1 in 32 odds. On the 9 egg clutch, are you the unlucky 1 in 512 and will you keep trying until you get to 20 babies for a 1 in 1 million chance?

it happens .....someone in here did it for 2 years with no homozygus babies.then hit one on the third year.....

.I get bad ratios..........this year I bred (again) a poss het pied.......she laid first time and from 7 eggs I got N N N N N N pied........last egg..........what if one died?...hmmm.....

try 2 years then scream......talk to seller this year to start the ball rolling......

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Thanks for the responses. In retrospect I shouldn't have said disprove. Suppose the only way to disprove would be genetic testing. Should have said how many before you really give up on them being hets

So far in my experience whenever I've done homozygous to het I've gotten clutches of 4-6 eggs and have always gotten at least two visuals (knock on wood) so it'll be hard for me not to give up on these poss hets that laid 5 and 6 eggs respectively if they don't show visuals. And if the supposed 100% het doesn't have a visual in the 9 egg clutch she laid when bred to the homozygous a note will be going on the BOI...

Chris

Hi yall,

There was a guy that produced a 13 egg clutch last year from a visual x Het cross that produced visuals the year before. Never saw another male. and produced no visuals at all in 07.

I would contact the breeder, explain what happened this year to inform them and go from there. Many require at least 2 producing seasons for exactly this reason.

misses can happen.

Lee Van Hyfte

Thanks.

In this particular case I don't think that contacting the breeder will do me much good. From what has come to light on the BOI about the breeder it seems to be a more widespread issue with this individual and others don't appear to have had a lot of luck in their contacts. Unfortunate timing on my part I suppose as I looked on the BOI but didn't see negative posts prior to aquiring the het. There seemed to be a flood of them after.

Chris