Reptile & Amphibian Forums

100% het albino male breed with 50% het albino female, only 4 babies but all look normal. this was her first year of breeding. so should I breed her again to the same male next year just in case it was just my bum luck? or assume shes normal and breed her to a 100% het pied male to produce higher value babies next year. what would you do? thanks.

JIM

We'll I dont know where to start. Just cause you didnt hatch an albino this year doesnt mean shes not a het. I mean you only hatched 4 babies. Your odds were only 1 in 4 to begin with. And we know how that goes sometimes.
I would breed her next year to either an albino or the same het. And hopefully your have better luck the next time around.

Breed her again to the het albino male. 4 eggs really isn't enough to prove it one way or the other. You could very easily have missed.

Mark

>>100% het albino male breed with 50% het albino female, only 4 babies but all look normal. this was her first year of breeding. so should I breed her again to the same male next year just in case it was just my bum luck? or assume shes normal and breed her to a 100% het pied male to produce higher value babies next year. what would you do? thanks.
>>
>> JIM

Of course your female could be a 'normal' and not a het, but
even if she was a het you'd miss on producing an albino from
4 eggs ~32% of the time (~3 times out of 10). Even if you
produced 8 eggs, you'd still have a 10% chance of missing!
Here is a table for het to het and the likelihood of missing
any recessive morph.

May the odds be with you!
Chris Simone
www.SimoneReptiles.com

# of.......Chance
eggs.....of missing...
----.......------------
1..........75.00%
2..........56.25%
3..........42.19%
4..........31.64%
5..........23.73%
6..........17.80%
7..........13.35%
8..........10.01%
9..........7.51%
10........5.63%
11........4.22%
12........3.17%

Hey Chris,

Can you tell what that formula is for calculating probability with a 1:4 chance?

Thanks,
Glenn

Hey Chris,

Forgot to mention, I'm not just looking for the probability when there are just four eggs, but any number of eggs.

Thanks,
Glenn

The formula for your chance of missing in a clutch of size "N" with an individual egg's probability of missing "P" is like this:

P^N

That is P to the power of N.

For the 4 egg het X het clutch N = 4. Each egg has a 0.75 (75% or 3/4) chance of NOT being homozygous so the formula comes together like this:

0.75^4 = 0.75 X 0.75 X 0.75 X 0.75 = .3164 or 31.64%

If you pick the scientific view in Windows Calculator there is an “x^y” key and the keystroke would be like this:

.75 “x^y” 4 =

..

Randy is correct.

It is always interesting to me that people think that if
they breed a het to het and there are 4 eggs they they
WILL FOR SURE get one visible. This is obviously not the
case. There are no guarantees with Mother Nature!

Good luck hitting your odds!
Chris Simone

I say give her one more chance. If she doesn't produce, you have a normal breeder that you can breed to a pastel or something.
Or you can sell her.
Either way, 4 eggs is too little to judge right away.

more time with that male. Also, are you sure the male is 100% het? Has he produced any Albino offspring?
-----
Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles