Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well my days of buying 100% HETS are OVER. After these last 2 clutches HETS to me or worthless.

My 2nd clutch pipped on its own early this morning. This was a shocker to me as today is supposed to be day # 50 into incubation.

Exact time I am not sure, but when I checked the temps in the room I found one of the babies poking through the egg.

This is a nice clutch of 6 perfect HUGE eggs with NO-SLUGS. All of the eggs the same exact size.

This clutch came from a monster 2001, 100% HET ALBINO female that was purchased as a baby in 2001. Actually she was part of a 2.4, all 100% HET albino package.

These are the best 100% HETS you can get (without worries) as they were purchased directly as babies from Tracy Barker.

This female was bred to my Graziani male ALBINO. The male albino was the ONLY stud and she never saw any of my HET albino males.

Can you beleive that there was not ONE single albino? I mean OK, I should be happy there all alive but JESUS, not one single albino?

Correct me if I am wrong but albino x HET albino usually = 50% albino? I know its not a sure thing, but from 6 beautiful eggs I did not get a single albino snake?!

I'm really bummed about this, I really cannot get over this.

Will post pictures of everthing later, the breedings, the paperwork, and the pipping eggs.

Today I cut the Pastel x Normal clutch, 4 eggs, but I cannot tell if there are any pastels, or if there just all normals.

Will have to wait for them to come out on there own.

This clutch was laid only a day apart from this albino x HET albino clutch.

With my luck running the way it is, I really don't even care if I get a Pastel, infact I don't expect it.

Will give you photos and updates of the clutch, the breedings if there are NO pastels this way you can have a good laugh if there are no pastels in the clutch.

This certainly changes a lot of things for me. I was working so hard to get my remaining 100% HET albino females up to size for breeding.

But after my last two 100% HET albino girls, both with 6 eggs, both that you know FOR sure are 100% HETS (Tracy Barker) (Bob Clark) HETS.

As I was saying I'm no longer in such a rush to get these 100% HET girls up to size, what's the point, I don't expect to get albinos from ANY of them even were they someday breed to my male albino.

Any oh YEAH, sorry have to vent a little more, my first clutch from my Bob Clark 100% HET albino female, the babies that I call 66% HETS because I used 3 different males, 2 VPI HET albino males and my male albino.

Well it's close to a month since they hatched ONLY 1 snake is feeding now on a regular schedule. The other 5 just cruise there shoe-boxes, show 0 interest in feeding, and I have tried just about every food item, and every trick I know.

Nah, I'm not to frustrated over here.

Yes, you sound a bit frustrated. I don't blame you; all the time and money you've invested only to see your investment take a very different path than you expected.

Chin up! It may sound like mother nature is not being fair to you, but all is not lost. You successfully bred your snakes and got some nice eggs with no slugs and live babies; I hope to be that lucky some day!
On the flip side, I can only afford hets, so I would be interested in a male and a female (from different clutches) in the next 2-3 months. E-mail me! graycat274@hotmail.com

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...got balls?

graycat

Letting me live here:
2.2 normals
0.1 pie ball
1.0 hetpied
0.1 Suriname
? Common snapping turtle
? Alligator snapping turtle
1 Guinea pig
2 gold fish (turtle survivors)
3 pet rats and
3 cats
Oh yeah, and 3 children!

Albino X 100% Het = no albinos?

sounds to me like the 100% het is not really a het for anything, sorry to break it to you but seems you got a normal.
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"I am not an expert."

1.0 Albino Het BP
0.1 Albino BP
1.0 Caramel Albino Het BP
0.2 Normal BP
1.0 Reduced

jrmiah@hotmail.com

I hate to say it but it sounds like there may be some mistake or mixup on the part of your het. Either that or this clutch was about as unlucky as it gets.

An albino bred to a 100% hets has about a 1.5% chance of having no albinos in a six egg clutch (and the same chance of getting all albinos). Don't give up, keep your baby females since you know they are hets since you did the breeding yourself.

Your right that albino X het albino = 50% odds for each egg of being an albino.

The odds of not getting any albinos from a 6 egg clutch from albino X het is:

0.5^6 = 1.5625%

So you where about 3 out of 200 unlucky (i.e. if there where 200 such clutches we would expect about 197 of them to have at least one albino and 3 not to have any). It happens, just sucks when you’re one of the 3.

Randy,
You continue to astonish me with your mathmatical skills. I'm the 2nd of the 3 that had the same story (big name het vs my albino = 0) this year. I wonder who will be number three? lol
Ken

You must remember ball pythons can get you on your knees yelling moma!!!!!!!!

No pieds in two years........
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RicK @ BbI

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

Do you think there is something wrong with my male albino's genes or something?!

I know that sounds crazy but I dunno what to think..

AH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Momma!!! Momma!!!

Momma !, I bred HET albino to HET albino 6 eggs no albinos!! Even though the momma HET albino is a Bob Clark HET that was first bred with a ALBINO!

Momma !, I bred HET albino to albino 6 eggs no albinos!!
Even though the momma HET albino is a Tracy Barker HET!

Momma, I wish I was breeding albino x albinos, but Momma I cannot afford a group of all albino bp's.

I have no question in the world that my HETS are true 100% HETS they came to me as babies directly from some of the most reptuable breeders in the country.

PS. Won't it be funny when I check those 4 eggs from my Snakekeeper Pastel x Normal and find no Pastels?

I expect it to happen I really do, I hope it does so I can laugh, because beleive me I will LAUGH.. I will be disapointed but I will have to laugh at what scum I am

Hi Damon,
Don't dispair. Look at it this way. in the last month or so you have hatche dout two clutches of ball pythons. your first hatchling snakes I belive and something you wanted to do for a while. The fact the first female was bred by your albino means nothing unless he was the only one to bred here, because in most mammals and reptiles due to the occurence of multiple paternity in single litters (i.e. several males contribute to a single litter), the last male to have mated will have contributed the greatest to the females clutch (generally in the order of 80% or more). So your first litter is indeed 50% poss hets. The second litter however is better. A single male, in this case the albino is the father. That means all your offspring are 100% hets. So, you can either keep all the females to raise up and breed back to increase your albino/het albino production in the coming years, or you can sell them as het pairs (depending on the ratio) for the current going rate of what $800 or $900. So you may be able to cover the cost of your albino male from this single litter.
Mate, its not the end of the world. be glad you hatched out some great snakes and there is always next season when you have more females up to size. Remember however that multiple males contribute to litters, so only use the het males if 1) you ain't sure if the albino has mated the females and 2) if the albino male has already mated 4 or so females.
hope this gives you a bit of hope. fingers crossed you hatch out some pastels. if not, theres always next year. Atleast this year gives you the experience of breeding and hatching babies.
regards,
Warren Booth (UK)

YOU GET 4 PASTELS!! YOU DESERVE IT.

Good luck
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Chad Bachman

I have an adult female 100% het albino that has not delivered for me in 3 years. That wench just won't take.
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Jay A. Martin

I have two 100% 1999 het albino and nothing and a 1997 100% het pair of pieds and no pieds yet yep fun huh?
If they don't go in 2005 I will get in cage in 2006!!!!!! LOL
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RicK @ BbI

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

.
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Jay A. Martin

Damon, Who did you buy the hets from?

np

Interesting.......
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RicK @ BbI

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

It says that his hets came from Tracy Barker, it doesn't say that she sold them to him... People will resell animals that they bought from other breeders all the time. I've got a het male that came from the snake keepers, I've even got the original paperwork that came with him... But They're not who I bought him from. I too would like to know who the actual seller was.

Mark

He did not say I, but did say they were perchased as babies directly from Tracy Barker. I would think directly would me no middle man??? Wouldnt it?
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Chad Bachman

I see that now from the paperwork posted in the most recent post from Damon. Just unlucky I guess, happens to everyone now and then.

Mark

We've bred Ball Pythons for 3 years and have yet to produce a single Albino from Albino male to female 100% Het breeding. We think the Hets we bought aren't Hets, but were told by numerous breeders to breed them for at least 3 years to prove them. I think you will find this happens frequently you just don't hear about it here.

Last year we also bred our Pastel male and got two clutches of 8 and 7 eggs with no Pastels, so sometimes the odds are just not with you.

We bred our Mojave male to 5 normal females and produced 13 Mojaves, and this year we bred him to 11 females and so far we have produced 21 Mojaves to date with 2 more females to lay and eggs incubating.

So as you can see good and bad things happen to everyone, and just like someone else told you, you did have successful breeding which is a great thing.

As far as your hatchlings not eating that happens to us also, but given time and a choice between rat pups or mice pinks they will more than likely eat soon.

Debra and Diana
Camlon Reptiles

your frustration. A couple of months ago I was ready to sell of the balls and just not deal with them anymore. That was over the failure to produce a single clutch. I'd be a lot more than just frustrated if I produced two clutches from an albino to het breeding and not produced a single albino. My experience with this type of breeding with colubrids always produced at least 2 albinos and usually 4. The pair that I bred for 8 years always produced clutches of 6-7 eggs. I got a pretty fair split of hets to albinos but never ended up with no albinos. The odds can go against you but this certainly looks like another example of hets that are not hets. Time to talk to the person that sold you those hets. I do want to emphasize talk. You won't get very far if you start with threats. A big name breeder with a large collection should have no problem swapping a proven het female from his collection for your het female that did not produce albinos. This is if he really sold you hets.

be breeding ball pythons....first burms, then you got rid of them quickly when they started giving you trouble, now balls.
The odds are against you this time around but next year you could get all albino from albino to het females.
Its happened, hell I know someone who bred albino to albino and got 5 eggs of which only one was albino and the rest hets!!!
That isn't whats supposed to happen is it? but it happens.
People breed het males to normal females to get poss hets and end up hatching 20 males....
its just a matter of time....if you are to distraught from this you shouldnt be doing it in the first place and simply should just have them as pets.
It happens, sucks, but it does, live with it. If it were me I would be saying great, now I can grow even more up.....
Mike
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"Quality isn't Quality without customer service so I guess I sell quality"

Tell me more about this breeding that didn't result in all albinos please.

As stated, this should not be possible.

Was there any chance of sperm retention (had the female been bred before)? Was it a group breeding (maybe one of the other “females” was really a male) or had the female been housed with any other balls. Was the male also breeding females who had been with other males at the same time (could a male carry another males sperm to a new female?).

What background do you have on the linage of the two albinos? I've heard of some very bad luck breeding for albinos and now I'm starting to wonder if there might be incompatible lines floating around out there after all.

nope, they are compatible.....he produced all albinos from same pairing the next year.
The albino x albino breeding by definition should mean all albinos, but since when does mother nature go by definition.
Many things happen that cannot be explained.
For one thing is sure though, the pair is the only pair that has anything to do with albinos the lady has.
So no other males, no other albinos, no transfer of sperm, etc.
They did prove out this year though....
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"Quality isn't Quality without customer service so I guess I sell quality"

I've got to believe there is an explanation for everything in genetics; we just don't have enough data and tools yet to find it.

Hopefully some day we'll have paternity testing. It's already available for most any domestic animal and even some fish. Perhaps the albino male was the father of the albino egg and some other male was the father of the others. She might have stored sperm for a long time. If the albino male and any of the normal babies from that albino X albino breeding are still known perhaps they can be tested when a paternity test eventually becomes available for ball pythons.

In the case of Damon’s het female, who knows, maybe it was even pathogenesis and the normals where clones of the het mother (remember the Burm where this was documented). Are the babies all females? There is also another kind of cloning documented in snakes where they produce all males. If those babies are all the same sex they might be an interesting genetic study for some university. Of course I think it is more likely this was just the 1.6% chance of producing all normals from 6 eggs of albino X het. It’s works out to only a 1 out of 64 odds. If you where in a room with 64 other people and you win a door prize it’s not that unbelievable.

Randy

When I first got into snakes like 15 years ago...I met a guy named Jesse that had bred albino corns. He also had a situation of an albino corn..."throwing" a normal. You could call it a throw back gene or whatever. The point is it can happen...the odds are very slim but it does happen. I know you understand alot of genetics but I am not sure of your background...but even though they do not have the colors and they are albino...the genes are still there...there is the possibility of crossing over within the genes as well. How else did the first albinos come about in the first place? There was some crossing over and the genes became available for a phenotype.
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Michael Enriquez

Crossovers can happen between two copies of the same chromosome and make a difference when there are different mutations at different locations on the same chromosome.

In this case, all four copies of the two parent's genes at the albino location are albino. There isn’t a normal copy of that gene between either parent. If there was a transposition of a gene from a different location I don’t think it would correct the albino condition.

I guess there could be a spontaneous mutation back to normal but I wouldn't expect to see this happen more than once in a clutch (and only then in very very rare clutches). It might explain the one normal corn (although I would suspect some breeding error) but not the clutch of balls with several normals and one albino.

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Chad Bachman

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Chad Bachman

the two lines are not compatable, it happens. Hopefully this is the case, or you just have extremely bad luck or hets that are not hets at all.
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Chad Bachman

Sorry to hear about the ratio's. I too was humbled this season. I bred a Albino male to a Het. High Contrast female. Now, this female 3 years ago produced 2 Albino's bred to a het. She took last year off. This year I again got 5 eggs. I was hoping 2-3 at least. Out of 5 I only got 1 Albino !! I also got 8 eggs from a Pastel to normal and only got 2 Pastel males.

I know its not as bad as what your going threw, but the Ball Python gods can be mean to you, or rewards out the butt. Im just hoping next season my odds change in the other direction. Id bred them again next season and only to a Albino for confirmation. IF a mistake was made, I honestly cant see Tracy not wanting to correct it. Dont give up just yet.

he has hets from two different people....bob clark, and tracy.
I highly doubt that none are hets or that a normal slipped through.
These people are known pro-breeders and though a mistake could be made, I would bet against that happening.
I seriously doubt that the hets sold to him are not hets. and I also doubt the albinos are non compatible as all albinos thus far have been.
and knowing the way thigns work, tracys hets could be originated from bobs, or vice versa....
You have to wait till next year......
look at ralph, he had 50% hets not produce pieds from het pied breeding but he had missed.
it could happen to you as well.
people miss all the time, its actually good for the market from a certain view point. see, balls can be challenging at times....which in the end means less production, as damon isnt the only one that has missed, lots more have , but that keeps the market good in a way.
he is the only one that may have gone public.
people produce ten egg clutches from pastel to normal and get ten normals, then some people produce three eggs and get all pastels....and vice versa......it happens, its part of the game, play with it.
worse case scenario now is you have more female hets!!!!
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"Quality isn't Quality without customer service so I guess I sell quality"

Funny how this has happened to him twice this year from sibling female hets, dont you think? First to a het X het breeding, and now an albino X het breeding. I haven't heard of non compatable albino Balls, but it's not impossible. Still sounds like he is breeding normal girls that are thought to be hets (weather he mixed them up, or was sent the wrong animals).

You are right, anything can happen, but two times in one season sounds a little fishy to me.

JMO
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Chad Bachman

I understood the first clutch het female to be from Bob Clark and the 2nd clutch het female to be from VPI. Damon straighten us out here!

Maybe, I don't remember. It would be interesting to know which strain (sire & dam) was used for both clutches. This is just too unlucky to believe he has actual hets, or at least compatable ones.
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Chad Bachman

....I bred 100% het girl *( Ball Boutique //from Ian Gnadsdowski)........bred to albino male *(BHB).....got 6 eggs.......and 5 albinos from it.......*(5 albino one het ...all males..still happy as can be).....

.......bred 100% het ghost to het ghost....got 7 eggs..and the ratio is correct....3.2 66% poss hets and 2 male ghosts....

hets are fine......

only ever got one snake from VPI......Jungle carpet python...nice snake....big....fat..eats.......someday maybe....I'll get 1 egg from it......*been breeding for 8 years now..she is 10)..Happy Birthday JCP..LOL

......

MAYBE the airlines are killing our snakes?........no..that isn't it..you got eggs that hatched.......even if they are wrong morph..

ALL YOU CAN DO IS BREED THE 2 HET FEMALES AGAIN NEXT YEAR EXCLUSIVELY TO THE ALBINO MALE........AND ..IF YOU GET 0 ALBINOS AGAIN...I'D BE MAKING PHONECALLS AND DEMANDS....!!!........

.......it happens....but.....wow......

good luck.....have fun.......

JY
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.....wow....you people....really.....you are exactly like I thought.........

............right?

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