Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Still wish I knew what went wrong.

Here are the photos, won't go into details, for details please read my post below.

Male Albino from Graziani Reptiles bred to 100% HET Albino from Bob Clark. The male albino bred the female the 1st and 2nd time.

Then this same female was bred the 3rd and 4th time by my 100% HET albino male from Tracy Barker. This same female was then finally bred to ANOTHER Tracy Barker 100% HET albino male for the 5th and 6th time. The HET males from Tracy Barker are both brothers if that matters or not I don't know.

OK using the HET albino males was a bad idea. I understand by doing this I just decreased my chances of getting albinos since I now am not sure who the father is.

Here are the photos and results from the Bob Clark 100% HET Albino female.

Here she is when she was bred the 1st and 2nd time with the Graziani male albino.

Here are the babies, no albinos. Perhaps my own fault for using the HET albino males. But I was hoping since the male albino bred her the 1st and 2nd time that he was the daddy.

Next up the 100% HET ALBINO FEMALE from Tracy Barker. A nice large female, here she is one time breeding with my Graziani male albino. Because she was such a large nice fat girl, I never let her breed with ANYONE ELSE.

She bred this Graziani male albino atleast 8 times through the breeding season. She dropped 6 nice LARGE eggs are the same size, all 6 hatched AGAIN NO ALBINOS. Here is a photo of the babies taken TODAY August-19th-2004.

A little shocked, This time the only stud was the male albino, I thought for sure with my 50% chance I would get atleast 1 albino, instead I get 0.

Is it possible my Graziani male albino for some reason is non compatable with my HET albinos? Mr or Mrs Graziani can you tell me what lineage my male albino is from?

READY FOR THE REAL SHOCKER****!!!!*!*!*!*!*! I have 1 more 100% HET albino female from Tracy Barker, this female is the SISTER of female that just laid the clutch with no albinos.

This sister snake is aprox the same exact size actually a little larger. They both grew and ate at the same rate. This same sister BRED the same male Graziani albino atleast 8 times.

This sister again because she was so nice and fat only bred with the male albino. Never did she EVER see any other male.

Do you know I think she may be gravid? I have not mentioned it because I think there is a small chance she re-absorbed her follicles. She grew into a monster, but since then not much going on.

She to well over 2300 grams like her sister could lay 6 or even 7 eggs just as nice as her sister! Do you relize that if she still does lay and the eggs hatch and there no albinos that this would mean again that albino x HET gave me no albinos!

Infact I am starting to hope she is not gravid although she is still off feed and there may be that little chance.

I don't think I could take it! I mean what if she is and I get no albinos again?! I am going to really freak out. I really hope she is not gravid, I don't think I could take the 2-month to find out what may hatch.

In closing I just want to include photos of my receipts. You may wonder what the story is on the other females that you see on the receipts. Simple, they didnt eat as well.

There not close enough to breeding weight and so I have not made any attempts to breed them.

Thanks so much for taking the time to listen to me ramble for the past 3 years. I really wanted to produce my very own albinos this season. I am extremly disapointed, and now also afraid to continue using my male albino as a future stud.

The answer may be simple, you were un-lucky. Boy if that was the case talk about having some bad luck.

Last year we bred a mojave to a pastel and got 4 normals. This year we did the same breedings to three different female pastels and got 2.1 pastaves. This year we bred an albino to one of our proven hets and got all hets. The year before she laid 6 eggs and we got 5 albinos. We usually get dogged on at least one clutch a year. This year we made 2.0 lucys breeding the lesser platty to a mojave girl. Every animal was a morph. We just got another 8 egg clutch from the lesser platty male to another mojave female and we would hope tp get more lucy's but you just don't know. We could get all normals or we could get 4 lucys. That is all up to the ball python Gods.. The key is to have alot of clutches. We had just under 50 clutches this year and expect to have around 70 next year. That is the way it works. You just don't know. Keep your chin up and keep breeding. I am sure the odds will even themselves out. They always do.. Take care

Joe and Wes
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If you do get a clutch from the other female het to the albino male and no albinos, than I would think (if they are 100% hets) you have 2 strains of the albino gene that are not compatable, but good thing is they should all be double het for both strains. Whatever the case, I hope something goes right for you this year, and breeding season isn't that far away to try again.

Good luck,
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Chad Bachman

Feel lucky! You have 100% het albinos......
My story.....
I bought 0.2 100% 1999 het albinos from VPI No eggs. I repeat No eggs.
Now I know my 2000 albino male [from The Snake Keeper] bred to my 2000 albino female [from The Snake Keeper] and produced in 2003 1.1 albinos and one albino died coming out of the egg.

Also I have 1.1 1997 het pieds from Pete that have not produced any pieds........Just 4 66% het pieds. [I paid $12,000.00 for these hets!] Oh my other pair produce 2.3 pieds.

So I hope I made you feel just a little bit better.
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RicK @ BbI

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

all are the same.......

think of it this way man.....

you can't get any worse odds..........it HAS to get better from here........

like I said before.......breed ALL het girls exclusively to the albino male.......one more time.....

then either have fun with albinos.......

or make some really bad phone calls...........!

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

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

......................................................

I saw on a breeders website a month ago a spider to normal breeding that produced all normals. I believe it was 6 eggs as well. Don't write them off as normals just yet. Sorry for your terrible luck.

But I will keep you updated on that Pastel x Normal clutch, lets see if I can totally bomb out this year.

I hope it works out for you, Damon.

For what it's worth, I'm jealous of you.

I don't have any eggs this season. Better luck next year, right?

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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!

I can't be much help, but why didn't you just buy a pair of Albinos? It would have cost the same and you get all albinos instead of hets. Or get the het females from the same breeders so the albino genes are compatible. Just wondring. Anyway, hope you get some albinos next time.

Hey Damon,

I've been reading your posts with great interest.. I, like yourself, am just getting into Ball Pythons. I did not have the ressources you had however, so my operation is very tiny at this point compared to yours.. here's my current stock:
1.0 LTC normal (adult - pet only)
1.0 CB Graziani-line pastel (adult)
1.0 CB het albino (adult)
0.1 CB het albino (adult)
0.1 CH unproven blackback (adult)
0.1 CB normal (adult)
0.1 CH high-gold pet shop special (yearling)

I received my het albinos in late summer 2003... both of them are very bad eaters... the female is very long, but way too thin (1739g currently). So she has not bred for me in the 2003-2004 season. It doesn't look very good for this coming season either. Also, the male probably only eats about 6 meals per year and is very small. Even though a friend of mine put him with a few of his females, the result ended up being one single clutch of 3.1 possible hets shared between the two of us... I purchased the pastel in spring of 2004 and he has not eaten yet. He currently has been off food for close to a year now (I'm guessing something like 10 or 11 months). Even though I had all the females a male Ball Python could ever handle in one season lined up for him (some of mine plus some of my friend's females also), I'm not sure how many he'll take (he's currently 970g, but should be at least 1200g to 1500g in my opinion). The only snake I have that eats like a champ is the adult normal female I have. She should be well over 2KG for this breeding season.. she's definately going to be the first that the pastel gets. Ball Pythons are not perfect, but that's part of their charm.. they are certainly more of a challenge than corn snakes

So overall, you are in much better position than others like me where the collection is small and we just can't get the "ball" rolling (pun intended heh). Getting such a project off it's feet is a lot of work. You're so close, it's really not time to quit... I understand it must be a complete drag to bomb it like that the first year, but the odds will even up.. Joe and Wes had a great post.. get the numbers up and work hard and it will all even out.. right now, your problem is that your numbers are too small.. you just wait until next year and I bet things will be different! like somebody already said, it can't get worst, so it's going to get better next year! Keep it up and keep us posted on the pastel x normal clutch!

Best Wishes,
Bristen.

Damon,

First let me say I am sorry that you did not hatch any albinos this year, for whatever reason. At the same time, I have reports back from 4 people who had a total of 6 clutches who reported hatching 19 albinos. These hets were all from the time you got your animals. These are only from the people who got back to me with their results, and they have provided me with plenty of photos of their success.

Over 12 years both VPI and Bob Clark have started albino, axanthic, clown, stripe, caramel albino ball python projects as well as a multitude of other species projects-in retics, bloods, boa constrictors etc. I would ask how the classifieds could be filled with almost every breeder selling animals of these mutations on the internet if the original animals that came from us were not 100% hets.

Though your feelings of sadness are understood, your posting and other people's comments are not helpful, warrented, or supported by statistics. Essentially it is hundreds of cases of great results vs a handful of cases of poor results. Meaning I don't think that any person looking at the numbers could argue anything other than Bob Clark and VPI's track record for people getting results is exceptional.

If you bred a pastel or a spider and you got all normal babies-which in fact MANY people do-you would not question if they are indeed pastels or spiders.

Statistics don't owe you-I think that there is a misunderstanding that Mendelian genetics-based on hundreds of crosses in pea plants, and the fact that snake genetics is a pleasant model that represents a fairly good approximation of similar results, leads people down a golden path.

You are lucky-you are trying to hit the odds for a good thing-this year I had an 80% chance of NOT having cancer when I had biopsies done. Guess what-with only a 20% odds essentially close to a 25%, a little less than the odds for getting an albino from a het to het cross-I had cancer. That was odds I was hoping not to hit.

Tracy

There was a time when a friend and I would flip coins to see how many heads or tails we could get in a row. With 50% chance of either way, it should be an even split, right? I remember (somewhat hazily) my longest run of heads as 12 in a row. That would be two 6 egg clutches of albino to het that were all het -- or all albino! One result thrilling, one discouraging. That's the "problem" with percentages, it can take a very large sample to prove them right.
More to the point, I have a pair of 1999 Barker het axanthics. This year was the first I got eggs from them. Six beautiful eggs, all went full term, only one axanthic.Then 5 died after hatching! But it's the axanthic that lived! I've figured out why the 5 died (my error, of course), can't tell you why only the axanthic lived. I've very unhappy to have lost 5 of them, very happy the axanthic lived.
In some ways your results are discouraging, but at least you've got some great holdbacks!
Of course I'm showing off a pic of the axanthic!

Let us know what killed the normals so we know how to avoid that danger.

I just try to keep an open mind and analyze all the data I can get. Incompatibility is always a possibility. It sounds like the data doesn't support it being the most likely explanation though.

Does anyone have breeding results from a large number of co-dom males to a large number of normal females? Maybe several of the larger co-dom breeders could come forward with the data and we could put together a large sample. It would be interesting to see if we are averaging 50% and also if it's a normal distribution with a cluster around 50%. If not, we could try to think up theories to explain it and ways to test those theories. Without paternity testing for all we know pathogenesis is fairly common in ball pythons. Or it could just be that you tend to hear about the few shut out clutches disproportional often from very many clutches that average them out. If the data supports significantly more shutout clutches than expected we need to figure out ways of testing theories of how this could happen (i.e. paternity testing etc.).

Man I feel so bad for you. I have been following your progress now for 3 years and reading about all your trials and troubles.

No one (beside you) wanted to see you hatch out some albinos as much as me. I know you think you are a bit of a pain in the butt sometimes but the underlying fact is that you are extremely passionate about all of this and you have worked incredibly hard to get to this point, only to be met with disappointment time and again!

I own the mother of your albino male. She is compatible with any albino having bred her with several totally different lines and produced albinos every time. Therefore your male should not be in question. Regarding the female hets, I have had bad luck in the past having produced an 11 egg clutch and only one pastel. Bad odds wouldn't you agree? It happens.

When ever something bad happens along this road I always say to myself "Get ready for something good to happen!" An man...if that's the case, you are going to have a banner year next year!!! God knows you deserve it!

Keep your chin firmly up buddy. You work hard at this game and it will all pay-off in the long haul.

Markus
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www.ballpython.ca

I was cleaning and feeding adults today. I feel for "bumps" aka eggs......I am sure my one of my 1999 albino het has 4 chicken size eggs in her body....... She went off food......Hope to see some yellow worms soon......Hell I want het albinos too!
RicK
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RicK @ BbI

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