Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just hatched the first pastels of the year. It feels so good to see those beautiful babies crawl out of those eggs.

This snake comes from a clutch of 4, the mom became egg bound with the other 3. All 4 eggs were Pastels.

Can't beat those odds.

This is the first eggs ever from the sire a NERD line pastel, so to this point he is a dominate animal. 4 for 4.
I get to prove him co-dominate the first week in June after a clutch of nine eggs hatches.

Have a great day

Tony Hurt

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Mike and Eric
Captive Bred Reptiles

nm

Wasn't that proven like 7 or 8 years ago? Did Kevin import a new line of Pastels?

Jeff,

Im sure the male is co-dom. I was just making the point that he has produced four eggs and all four have been pastel.

Tony

Cool.

My Partner had his first clutch of eggs from a Pastel sire to a normal female pip the other day. The female had a small clutch of only 3 eggs to begin with, so we were a little bummed, but hey, we should at least get 1 Pastel from 3 eggs and you can't complain about that! Well, everything was going great and he called me and said 1 of the 3 eggs was looking bad and he had serious doubts about it, even though it was so close to the hatch date. 2 eggs pipped and he cut them to where he could get a good lok and not 1 Pastel, but 2! The 3rd egg was dead. Don't know why, as the snake was fully formed, just one of those things that happens. But 2 Pastels even with such awful odds, we know just how you feel. We have 7 more healthy eggs from another female due soon. We're hoping for 7-out-of-7! Congrats on the babies and good luck on the ones coming up!

Skip Nelson

SNReptiles

Tony,

So how did the mother due with the other three bound eggs? Did you try any treatment or did they come out on their own? I've only heard of a few other bound balls.

Of course pastel is considered co-dominant, not dominant. However, if both of your pastel's parents where pastels then I suppose it is possible that he is homozygous pastel and just is not a particularly nice looking super pastel and slipped through to be sold as a regular pastel. The next clutch should help you determine that.

The odds of getting 4 for 4 pastels from a heterozygous pastel X normal is 1:16. Not that long of a shot so while not likely still reasonable that you just got lucky and he is only heterozygous for pastel. However, if he is only a normal (het) pastel and not a super (homozygous) pastel then the odds of him producing 7 pastels in the next clutch will be 1:128. And considering the whole year and producing 11 for 11 pastels will be a 1:2048 and I would then say he is probably a super pastel (assuming his mother was pastel).

Skip,

Going 2 for 2 producing pastels from pastel X normal is only a 1:4 shot, the same as your chance of going 0 for 2. Glad you got the nicer outcome though even if it wasn’t any more unlikely than no pastels.

Here is a twisted one for you. Last year I bred a 66% chance albino to a 50% chance albino and only two of the eggs went full term but both where albinos. The odds of going 2 for 2 with hets for a recessive trait is 1:16. However, when you factor in the 1:3 odds of both the parents actually being hets it was a 1:48 chance. However, that must have used up all my luck because they where both horribly kinked and didn't make it

Randy,

The mom [the adult female died]. Her ovaduct was twisted in several places [according to the vet]. He tried pushing saline through her ovaduct without success. The vet later performed the open extraction method and the snake did not recover from the procedure.

She did leave a black backed pastel male to carry on her legacy. He wont be for sale.

Tony

Sorry to hear she didn't make it.

I used to hear about (and had one myself) egg binding all the time with corn snakes but I think this is only the 3rd one I've heard of with balls. It sucks that it happened to you but at least it doesn't seem to happen all that often.

One of the other ones I heard about passed the egg on her own in a few months and I think the other one recovered from having it messaged out. With the corn I had the vet drew the yolk out with a syringe and she passed the shell and went on to produce fine the 2nd clutch.

Oh yes, I think someone recently posted about a ball case where they drew some yolk out and she passed the egg and it might even yet hatch. Still seems less frequent than with corns though.

congats, 4 for 4 awsome!!!!!!!!!!
TomChambers