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I was wondering if anyone has had some really interesting and lucky encounters with "possible" hets? Or even normals that somehow threw great and unexpected genetics.

For example, how many of you have ever bought that "too cheap to be real" "possible het" for whatever, only to prove it out to be real.

Or breed so called normals and have a wonderful surprise hatch out?

I am just curious. I was just wondering, with all the normals, possible hets and hets in the world, how many have proven out?

I am not talking about 100% hets of course. I just would like to hear of some of you that took a gamble on the low dollar snake and got the high dollar outcome.

I love to hear people's successes.

Thanks,
Troy

well.....bob clark was breeding 2 ball pythons together...and hatched out albinos.

Are you talking about the first albino ball? It was an import male that Bob purchased.

I purchased a NERD 100% het albino male, bred him to a normal and kept the four 50% chance het daughters. I then sold the 100% het male to fund a 66% chance het albino male that was also 50% chance het Jolliff axanthic. When I bred him to the first of the four 50% chance het albino daughters I only got 5 eggs and 3 when bad quickly (might have been infertile). However, both of the remaining eggs contained albinos (from a 66% X a 50%). The bad part is they where both horribly kinked and didn't survive but at least I know I hit. I've since sold that proven het female so I sure hope one of her sisters also hits. I got two babies from one of them bred to the same now proven het male but both where normals. I don’t think two babies was enough to disprove her being a het and two of the sisters have het to produce.

I've heard of at least two "normal" females turning out to be het albinos over the years (i.e. unexpectedly produced albinos when bred to a known albino gene male). Depending on how widely and randomly distributed the mutant genes are in Africa you might expect the het rate for some mutations to be as high as 1 in 100 (IF randomly distributed, 1 in 100 hets would produce 1 in 10,000 wild bred homozygous mutants). As more and more normals are bred to gene carrying males I expect we will keep finding a few surprise hets.

Hopefully this year and the next few I'll have a few more possible het stories gone good to share. In addition to the albino and Jolliff axanthic project I’m working with possible het stripe, piebald, clown, and caramel. I finally broke down and bought a 100% het ghost male but will keep his 50% chance het daughters so that will also be a possible het project. I’m also working with an unproven import girl with some axanthic and ghost characteristics. Working with possible hets is a personal preference and not for everyone. In my case I like having a shot at a lot of different morphs rather than having everything ride on one surer thing (like a pair of 100% hets).

so bob clark was walking along, and got a phone call...a different looking ball python was availible. He snatched it up, and proved it out as an albino. nows hes a rich man.

That's pretty much it except that Bob was already a well established python morph breeder with the even more interesting story of the first albino Burmese pythons he bred ( http://www.bobclark.com/d_learn.asp?id=66&cat=learn ). There was an old Vivarium magazine article that detailed how he rented the imported albino burm male and got it to breed before sending it back.
Story of first captive albino ball python