why do i read a lot of times the pythons are breed back to there mother or father. I can't remember once that a brother and sister were breed together. Any reason for this?
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ball python breeking back to morther or father
jeff113
Jan 26, 2005 12:11 AM
Replies (1)
Philly_nr
Jan 26, 2005 12:29 AM
If the father/mother is homozygous for a particular phenotype, the children will be heterozygous for that phenotype. Let's assume that you're breeding a normal male to an albino female for instance.
The clutch will be 100% het for albino. Yes, you can breed the siblings to each other but you'll have a chance a 66% chance at producing albinos from breeding the siblings. In theory for a clutch of four, one would be a normal, one would be an albino and two would be het for albino. Since you can't tell the normal from the hets, it's a 66% chance that the normal looking animal is het for albino.
However, if you breed the male sibling back to the mother (assuming a clutch of four), you'll get two albino's and two 100% het albino's.
This is all theory but basically, you'll fair with greater odds by breeding the offspring back to the homozygous parent. When you have double recessive genes, the ballgame changes and you'll want to breed the siblings together. Case in point, a carmel glow (het for orange ghost and het for caramel albino) and another would be a snowball (het for Axanthic and het for Albino).
Hope this helps ya!
Ron Crawford
