Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So yesterday I walked into the snake room, and was pleased to see my Hypo Jungle female was starting to drop her litter. Here's where it gets weird......

She was sold to me as a plain Hypo jungle with no other genetics....not even poss for anything. So I bred her to my fully striped het albino male. I did this hoping for cool patterns...jungle, striped, etc.
So as the litter came out, the first 28 babies were split right down the middle at 14 Hypos and 14 normals. Only 1 baby had full striping, with a few others that were approx 25-35% Striped. Then comes baby #29....a beautiful sunglow with a junglish pattern, but nothing amazing. Needless to say I was shocked!!! For Mom to be a het, the percentages should have been 12.5% Sunglow and 12.5% Albino. She pushed out 2 more babies...1 hypo, and one normal.

So final talley...

15 Hypos
15 Normals
1 Sunglow
2 Slugs

Seems genetically impossible, but Im wondering if anyone else has ever experienced percentages this extremely low with a het/het breeding of this size??

Cant wait to hear your responses! Thanks so Much.

Ben Lom
Pulaski, WI

This is definitely odd! Maybe you just had really bad odds. You should post up some pics of the litter.

Thanks

Ulysses

this year i bred a paradigm to a motley het sharp got 0 sharps 0 paradigms...yours was almost worse, my litter had 17.

Here's one possibility. Well, first a question...is the male a proven het? Has he ever sired another litter and produced albinos? If he has then you can quit reading, becuase note of this applies. But if he hasn't....

I had a similar exerience breeding a het albino female jungle to a male not-het-for-anything jungle, and produced a litter of super jungles, jungles and wild types as expected, all presumably 50% het albino, since mom was a het. But there was one more...a single albino super jungle, the only albino in the litter, and it was a super jungle to boot (unfortunately, still born, but fully developed, even fully absorbed yolk). The only way this could have happened is if at least this one baby was a partho-baby. I had bred the male to an albino the year before, and produed no albinos, so he was "proven" non-het, yet there was an albino in "his" litter, and the female was a virgin and had never been with another male.

Maybe your female is het albino, and the male isn't? Maybe you had one partho-baby? I personally think partho and partially-partho litters in boas are not nearly as rare as we used to think.

Just a palusible theory...

Congrats on the litter btw!

Mark
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Mark
uncommonboa.com

This is great info.....I honestly had never heard the term "Partho" before. Reading in to it a bit has been very eye opening.
To answer your question, I had bred the male one other time and he proven about like normal to another proven het. Liiter had 22 with 5 albinos. So the female is the weird part.....looked back at the limited records I have on her and she was definitely sold as a basic hypo jungle.
Who knows....maybe theres something special with this little guy

Thanks again for taking the time to reply....very much appreciated

Ben

I have had a litter were I breed stripe to stripe and had 37 babies

36 stripes and one stripe albino
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www.jpcboas.com

1) a female not sold as het Albino is actually het Albino - happens. For example a pos het albino bred to something not Albino related or multiple generations of pos het breedings maybe a ancestor of your female (or even your female) was not considered likely enough to be a het to even mention it?

2) Low odds on a single litter - also happens. Het x het = 1/4 so with 31 babies and perfect odds there would be 8 (or 7) albinos but you only got one. Yeah towards the wrong end of the bell curve but well within statistical variation on one single litter.

BTW, congrats on a nice large litter and congrats on mom being Het Albino.

Another reply mentions Parthogenic babies. Agreed this is probably much more likely than we realize. But remember, Partho babies will always be homozygous for EVERY gene pair whether normal or morph and will always be female. For example a DH Snow having one partho baby would be female and either Normal, Anery, Albino or Snow - no hets.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Dave,

Thanks so much for your reply. I guess I was spoiled over the years with litters that have always panned out right around the normal percentages

Im going to try and sex next week, so maybe that will give me some potential clarification regarding the Patho issue.

Thanks Again!

Ben

While parthogenic is always a possibility (albeit very remote) with any female offspring I would not think so in this case. The dad is a proven het Albino and it's the mom that was not known to be a het.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Here are a couple of example pics of the litter along with the lone albino. Typical they are all wrinkly right now

Look at the eyes, do you see some that have the "headlights" indicating probbale het Albino's? You should find several and I would not be surprised to find a lot, even most of the litter.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Congrats Ben! It is nice to have a little surprise in a litter. You are going to be busy feeding those babies.

Paul Hollander hopefully will be able to shed some light on your genetic question.

Later,
Robert
Baker's Boas