Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i'd like to hear some opinions from breeders about poss. het clutches. for instance if i bought an entire poss het clutch, how many have had failures to produce, have many breeders had success this way? i know nothing is perfect, i just want to hear some expierences.

thanks
vaughn

A guy on these forums....if you scroll down a little bit....just had 2 clutches where his possible het albino females proved out. If you don't have the money to get into a visual morph....I'd definitly recommend going with possible hets for the cost.....
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Luke Martin
Bronze Serpent Reptiles

Unless there is any way to pick hets then any selection of possible hets is just as random as the ones that happen to be in a clutch together. The Punnett’s square is for the odds for each egg, not any sort of guarantee of what the distribution of a clutch will be.

I produced my own clutch with four 50% het albino girls in 2000. Two of them produced two good eggs each in 2003 (also 5 bad eggs). They where both bred to the same 66% possible het albino male that was proven when the first two egg clutch contained albinos two albinos. The other girl's two eggs where normal but with only two eggs the odds of getting an albino from het X het where less than 50% anyway. A third sister first produced this year but I bred her to a 66% chance het caramel so don't expect albinos when they hatch in the next couple weeks. Hopefully I'll get a chance to test the fourth sister next year but I'll breed her to a different/untested 66% chance het albino male so it may take a while to figure out if these last 3 sisters are hets or not.

thanks for the replies, the clutch is a 2.3 poss. het albino
i plan to breed all three girls to an albino male or at least a 100% het male. any opinions on this plan?

thanks

vaughn

If the 3 girls are 50% chance hets then your odds of at least one turning out to be a het is 87.5%. If you add a 4th female (doesn't mater that it's from another clutch as long as the seller is honest and there is no way for anyone to identify het albino babies from possible hets) then your odds of at least 1 of the 4 being a het only go up to 93.75%. So if you are on a budget the 3 female possible hets might be a good place for you. Of course the more you get the better your odds but it never really reaches 100% but it's nice to have a few extras in case some take for ever to grow up and breed.

Using an albino male will increase your chances of getting an albino from small clutches with the ones that do end up being hets but again it's a dice roll, just with more eggs you get more rolls.

would any of you'll(breeders) take the chance of a 2.3 clutch, that the females would prove. if not i can always use the females in my pastel group. keep in mind that i'm not going to use these males, i plan on getting an albino male or at minimum a 100% het male.

thanks in advance

vaughn

3 Poss het females are always a good investment if you get them from a reliable breeder......

I would say go for it!!!! Like Randy said it really is an odds game..... Ralph Davis has proved poss hets like crazy and even poss DOUBLE hets which is even harder to do...... His way is to buy all the females from the same clutch....others say its better to pick from from different cluthes.....either way works....

I personally hold all of my females that are poss hets. I have A LOT of poss hets....Albinos, Pieds, Caramels, and even poss het Snow for both Jollif and VPI.....some are 66% others 50% and a whole lot of 25%.......

In the long run they pay off..... the most important thing to remember is to get animals from the right breeder.....I have made the mistake of buying animals from a non reliable founding stock and so far me and another breeder are paying for it big time. Its just the nature of the beast. Oh yeah and just because they are "big" breeders dont think that they are all reliable....

Good Luck
Raul

It comes down to a couple of factors.

Can you trust the seller that these are indeed 50% hets and not normals. Check the seller out on the other site.

Since you only want the 0.3, and might be lucky to sell the 2.0 and cover shipping, figure out what they are worth to you weighing factors such as the fact that you will have to spend years raising them up and still have a 12.5% chance that none of them is a het (first you have to get them ALL to breeding size and to produce enough eggs to even find out). You could go with fewer (maybe 1) 100% chance hets for the same money (probably more) but then you have fewer animals so less of a chance to compensate for a poor feeder that might take forever to grow up and breed (all your eggs in one basket sort of thing). Do you have the space, feeders, and persistence to grow up a larger number of animals on a chance? If the seller checks out, the price is right, and your situation and personality are suited to possible hets they can be a great deal.

thanks guys, i going to chance it, my pastel project is going to happen first(now), the worst case is the girls will be normals and then they will be in my pastel group. and i paid alot for normal girls . the males i can sell locally as pets. maybe if all goes well with the pastels i'll have a stronger albino group!!

thanks

vaughn