Reptile & Amphibian Forums

In theory the real(not fakes) hets that are being sold are supposed to produce the morph that they are het for (if proven parent wise),but they dont always produce what they are supposed to no matter if they are 100% het or not.It all looks good on paper until its time to prove it and then you get normals without the morph.Heres a hypothetical example: Lets say you have an albino b/p morph and breed it with a normal b/p,Theoretically you are supposed to get all 100% hets according to the experts and the genetics wizard anyway.Now take 2 of these 100% hets and breed them when they get big enough.Now again theoretically you are supposed to get at least one albino in a clutch of 4.Lets say for instance that you dont but wind up with a new morph instead,Now what went wrong with the so called genetics?2 possibilities come to mind 1) Mother nature decided to play the mind games or 2) somewhere along the line of one of the parents,one of there parents had the trait and it has skipped a generation and showed up in one of the grandkids.So basically in theory anything is possible and not just the obvious because sometimes even the obvious can throw you for a loop.

See if anyone can figure this one out with the genetics wizard pro.Lets say you have 2 normal b/ps and breed them together,you get a clutch of 6 eggs that are theoretically supposed to be normal.When they hatch you wind up with 4 normals and 2 pastel.Which one of the parents were carrying the trait? or is it just a natural occurance happening twice in the same clutch.I know it has probably happened but its a rarity.Ok just for kicks lets say you decide to breed them the next year.They have 5 eggs and out of the five you get 3 normals and 2 pastels.Now that would more than likely knock out the natural ocurrance,so how would you know which one was which if you decided to sell them seperately?Lets take it one step higher.Lets take the pastels and breed them to normals.You are supposed to get 100% hets for pastel.Now take the hets and breed them with either one another to prove the trait faster or another normal.Either way you should wind up with a pastel.Lets say that you dont (and it is a great possibility) what happened to the theory of pastel babies?Now all of this is hypothetical but can in all reality happen no matter what the genetics of anything,so have fun and play nice. Regards Bill McLeod

Good post Bill! I enjoy when people do this kind of thinking.
I'll give you my 2 cents...Just for ease of typing, let's assume
we are talking about albinos.

Let's assume we are talking about actual/true hets. Breeding
them to other hets, or line breeding them like many people do,
should always produce the morph...eventually. One thing that
confuses a lot of people is the notion of statistics and
probability. A het albino to het albino breeding, that produces
4 babies, does not mean that *for sure* you will get 1 albino.
Each egg has exactly a 25% chance of being an albino and a 75%
chance of LOOKING normal. In fact, almost a third of the time
(31.6% to be more exact), you will get 0 albinos out of 4 eggs!
One really needs to have a bunch more eggs (~8-9) without
getting an albino (when breeding het to het) before they can
start to think that they don't actually have hets.

Another point is that, if the animal is het, then it IS carrying
the gene. To the best of everyone's knowledge, the snake has no
ability to turn it on or off at will. It really just comes
down to statistics and probabilities.

Now, you raise an interesting point about having a NEW (or
different) morph 'popping up' in your theoretical breeding.
That does happen (and I'm still waiting for it to happen to
me! LOL!). You are right...it must be because one of the
parents was carrying the gene and you just didn't know about it.
I think there are a LOT of animals out there that are carrying
genes that people don't know about. I posted (what I thought)
was a pretty interesting thread about 6 months ago about this
very fact. It centered around the fact that you never see
anyone selling 25% het animals (50% het male to normal female
breeding). I'm sure this happens all the time. What happens
to all those 25% males? I think they must get sold off as
'normals'. Those normals may actually be het carriers (1 in 4
of them is likely), and people are undoubtably breeding those
males from time to time. Those 'normal' males (that are actually
hets) are producing 50% het offspring, and so it goes...
I say give it another 10 years and there will be a lot more
actual hets out their that people think are just normals...

Here's the post from way back on the 25%'ers: http://forum.kingsnake.com/ball/messages/54582.html
Let me know what you think!

Anyhow, just my 2 cents.
Have a good one!
ChrisS - SanJose

original post:
In theory the real(not fakes) hets that are being sold are supposed to produce the morph that they are het for (if proven parent wise),but they dont always produce what they are supposed to no matter if they are 100% het or not.It all looks good on paper until its time to prove it and then you get normals without the morph.Heres a hypothetical example: Lets say you have an albino b/p morph and breed it with a normal b/p,Theoretically you are supposed to get all 100% hets according to the experts and the genetics wizard anyway.Now take 2 of these 100% hets and breed them when they get big enough.Now again theoretically you are supposed to get at least one albino in a clutch of 4.Lets say for instance that you dont but wind up with a new morph instead,Now what went wrong with the so called genetics?2 possibilities come to mind 1) Mother nature decided to play the mind games or 2) somewhere along the line of one of the parents,one of there parents had the trait and it has skipped a generation and showed up in one of the grandkids.So basically in theory anything is possible and not just the obvious because sometimes even the obvious can throw you for a loop.

See if anyone can figure this one out with the genetics wizard pro.Lets say you have 2 normal b/ps and breed them together,you get a clutch of 6 eggs that are theoretically supposed to be normal.When they hatch you wind up with 4 normals and 2 pastel.Which one of the parents were carrying the trait? or is it just a natural occurance happening twice in the same clutch.I know it has probably happened but its a rarity.Ok just for kicks lets say you decide to breed them the next year.They have 5 eggs and out of the five you get 3 normals and 2 pastels.Now that would more than likely knock out the natural ocurrance,so how would you know which one was which if you decided to sell them seperately?Lets take it one step higher.Lets take the pastels and breed them to normals.You are supposed to get 100% hets for pastel.Now take the hets and breed them with either one another to prove the trait faster or another normal.Either way you should wind up with a pastel.Lets say that you dont (and it is a great possibility) what happened to the theory of pastel babies?Now all of this is hypothetical but can in all reality happen no matter what the genetics of anything,so have fun and play nice. Regards Bill McLeod

Chris,

I don't produce a lot but I've always sold my 25% chance het males (piebald and striped) at normal prices and the same for my albino gene 50% chance het males when I had some of those once. I do tell the buyers (local only, not worth shipping, this isn't an ad) what they have a chance to be het for just in case they want to work it into a breeding group for that gene. In the case of selling to pet stores, I don't think they keep track of what I tell them. I also had a private individual try to resell my possible possible hets as for sure hets. I didn't think 25% chance hets where special enough to warrant any sort of documentation but maybe it would help avoid confusion.

Bill,

Chris is right on about the chance being for each baby and not a guarantee of 1 out of every 4 being albino from het X het. Think of it this way. If you flip a coin twice, are you guaranteed to get one heads and one tails?

Technically you can never prove that your het pair isn't het, there will always be some chance that you are just extremely unlucky. At some point, you have enough normal babies to feel that one or both isn't a het. I'll try to figure out again how to post tables and I'll make one up showing the odds for each number of babies or find a post in the old forum where I already did this.

Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to post a table in the new forum. Here is a link to a page I just made on my web site with a table showing the odds of producing a recessive morph with breedings involving hets.
My odds tables

1- The lack of albinos in a 4 egg or bigger clutch doesn't prove they are not hets . You would need several litters to prove they aren't hets. This can be better accomplished breeding the hets with albinos from the same line that are known to be genetically compatable. The appearance of a new morph from the hets does not mean they are not hets for albino. They could both be gene carriers for a different mutation or the new morph could be a new mutation in that breeding.

2- If both parents are normals they are not hets for pastel as it is currently understood in the pastel mutation which is documented; ie a "co-dominant" mutation in which the normals from a pastel x normal breeding carry no pastel gene and the Pastel animals are het for super pastel. If the normal x normal breeding produces animals that phenotypically appear similar to the known mutation of pastels in 2 breedings in a row it is likely that the parents are carriers for a mutation that produces animals that appear pastel but have a different mode of inheritance that that of the currently known pastels; most likely recessive. Breeding a male baby back to it's mother would be more informative than breeding baby x baby or x a normal and the quickest way to get a better feel for this new mutation. Just becuase animals look the same doesn't mean the phenotype is the result of the same genetic alteration. A good example of this is the genetically incompatable Kahl and Sharp strains of albino boa. In your example it is likely that you have a recessive mutation that produces offspring that appear similar to the known pastel mutation but yours would have a different form of inheritance; the actual method of inheritance would have to be proven over time.

Bill Kirby

You could hatch zero albinos from a het x het breeding, see link below, I posted this a while ago.

Pastels are the hets of superpastels, so if you breed a pastel to a normal, the normals that hatch are really normal.

I can only say 1 thing about new morphs showing up from normal x normal breedings....
Most of the new morphs are produced by big breeders who say: Look what I hatched from 2 normals.....
But if I were a big ballpython breeder like tracy barker or ralph davis, and I keep about all the morphs in the world... then why would I breed a normal male to a normal female?!!??!??

Cheers,
Bas
http://forum.kingsnake.com/ball/messages/33457.html

Hehe

Wow...sign me up for some of those!!! heheh, sure beats kool-aid!