Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi everyone!

I checked all my Ball Python breeders this morning as I do every morning and found one of my Mojave males breeding a Pastel female. You are probably thinking that is the most butt- ugly pastel ever, but she's actually right smack in the middle of a shed cycle. Hopefully, things will go well with this project and I'll have a few Pastel Mojaves hatched by the end of the year!

PS- Has anyone come up with a name for that crossing yet or are we just going to call them Pastel Mojaves?

Garrick

Crested Gecko.com/ Royal Constrictor Designs

from mojave to pastel breeding and he first clutch is do to hatch in a few days. The rest of the eggs should hatch out by the end of the month. If we hit we were going to name it the Pastave. We should know soon. We had a 3 egg clutch last year and made nothing but normals. No we all play the waiting game..

Joe and Wes
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The 3 egg clutch thing wasn't that far out since there where so few eggs. The odds of such a strike out are 1:64 so while it was rather unlucky it wasn't astronomically so. I can't think of any genetic reason you shouldn't be able to make a double het mojave pastel (unless somehow the combination was lethal) so I think with those 18 eggs you are virtually guaranteed to produce one.

The next question would then be if you could produce a super mojave super pastel and it is possible that this could be complicated if the two mutations happen to be on the same chromosome (not particularly likely) or might even be impossible if they both happen to be mutations of the same gene, but again, not very likely to be a problem.

I think the name should be what it is a pastel Mojave and when we see the next generation it should be a super pastel mojave. Now if there is a Super mojave and we see a super pastel X Super Mojave I will have to think about that one a bit more. We will have lots of time to think about it waiting for that day. But for our two cents that is what we had planned on calling them last year but we did not get the odds along with everyone else that tried.

In the mean time this is what we hatched out yesterday.

np

Love that pink. I'll take her off your hands and I'll even wear a wig if you like.
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Jay A. Martin

"last year but we did not get the odds along with everyone else that tried"

How many offspring of pastel X mojave where produced last year by all breeders?

The 1:64 odds was for going 3:3 normals for this cross (i.e. no pastels or mojaves of any kind). The odds of not producing a pastel mojave was actually much higher - 9:64. However, if there where other breeders who also missed and the total number of eggs was very large then perhaps there is some odd sort of interference going on and we need to think about it some more to figure out what it could be.

We had a clutch of 9.

1 bad egg
4 mojaves
2 pastels
2 normals

The other people had 6 eggs and no mojaves.

You would have to ask morphking what the odds were on the clutch they produced.

Thanks!

I think MorphKing posted that they had 3 eggs and they where all normals. I would be interested if they had any eggs go bad though.

Hmmm...

You had:

1 bad egg
4 mojaves
2 pastels
2 normals

Do you know if the other people who did this cross in 2003 had any pastels or bad eggs in the clutch with the 6 non-mojaves?

By my count that makes the 2003 total of mojave X pastel eggs 18 (at least 1 of which went bad). If there isn't any interference between the two morphs the odds of not producing a pastel mojave out of the 17 good 2003 eggs was about 0.75% (i.e. there was a 99.25% chance that there would have been a pastel mojave in 17 eggs from pastel X mojave). When I only knew about the 3 MK eggs from 2003 that missed I thought it was just bad luck, but now I have to think there is something going on. I guess after the 18 eggs this year ( any more that others have) we should have an even better idea what is going on. MorphKing will either hatch one and we'll just figure 2003 was INCREDIBLY unlucky or know that there must be something up because with the 35 eggs from 2003 and 2004 together there is a 99.996% chance of producing a pastel mojave if there isn't something unexpected happening.

Perhaps someone can come up with some other ideas but here are the ones I can think of for things that might explain not producing a pastel mojave:

The combination might be lethal. I would particularly like to know how many fertile eggs didn't hatch from the 2003 (and eventually 2004) MorphKing clutchs and the 2003 6 egg clutch you mentioned. If we are getting close to 1/4 dead eggs then that would tend to support the idea that you just can't combine these two. Of course it will be hard to be sure of this because some eggs die from time to time anyway and of course maybe the combination could cause them to die before even being laid or perhaps even before becoming an egg.

It's also possible that one of the two mutations covers over the other and a genetic pastel mojave has been produced but it just looks like either a pastel or a mojave. The way to test for this would be with breeding all of the pastels and mojaves produced from pastel X mojave to normal and look to see if any of them produce some of the other type. The plain pastels will only produce about half pastels and the plain mojaves will only produce about half mojaves as expected but you will be looking to see if one of them is really a genetic pastel mojave that would produce one of the following unexpected results:

If the two genes are on different chromosomes then a genetic pastel mojave (which might look like either in this scenario) bred to a normal would produce babies each with the following morph chances:

25% normal
25% mojave only
25% pastel only
25% genetic pastel majave (looking like pastel or mojave, whichever the parent double het looked like).

If the two genes are on the same chromosome but are not two different mutations of the same gene then each egg’s chances are about:

50% pastel
50% mojave
(and a very small chance of normal or pastel mojave depending how far apart the two genes are on the common chromosome and how often crossovers occur in the region for ball pythons).

If pastel and mojave are two different mutations of the same gene then the genetic pastel mojave (regardless of what it looks like) would also produce 50% pastel and 50% mojave when crossed with a normal but there would be virtually no chance of normals or genetic pastel mojave's being produced.

I can't think of a really good way to tell the difference between the scenarios where they are two mutations on the same chromosome and where they are two different mutations on the same gene other than keep breeding double hets together and looking for the crossover to produce the long shot super pastel mojave or pastel super mojave. However it might take a long time since these would be much more difficult to produce if the two mutations are on the same chromosome vs. if they are on different ones (and impossible if they are different mutations of the same gene).

I suppose it might even be possible that the two genes cancel each other out some how and the genetic pastel mojave looks normal but will produce only pastels and mojave's when bred to a real normal (this one seems a little far fetched to me though).

Gee, looks like we are going to have fun genetic puzzles all the time now days!

Dan & Colette,

CONGRATULATIONS!! That is an awesome looking snake! Hopefully it will be the first of many like it for you guys.
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Rob Trenor
RK Reptiles
www.rkreptiles.com
www.rkreptiles.net
www.oldworldchameleons.com
www.ballpythonmorphs.net
www.beardedragons.com

_____

That is so cool looking. Like hand painted.
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RicK @ BbI

Ball Boutique,Inc.
The home of the singing snakes!

nm

Mohavexpastel