Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Okay I'm not too experinced with ball python breeding..but what would come out if I bred a normal with a het. albino or het.ghost? Thanks!!

The offspring from breeding a het male to a normal female would be referred to as 50% possible hets.
The best way to understand this is to look at Incomplete-dominate traits.Like the pastel.When pastel is bred to a normal,all offspring have that same 50% possible chance.

The only difference is that you can see which ones caught one pastel allele.Hence the term "Recessive",as the trait is not visable,but still has one allele(out of the two needed to be an albino).

It can also be expressed this way.

AA for Albino
PP for Super pastel
An for het albino
Pn for pastel

AA bred to nn = An
An bred to nn = half An half nn (out of statistical odds of 100)

...and to complete the description.
An x An = 25% chance(per egg) for albino
Pn x Pn = 25% chance (per egg) for super pastel

All the other offspring have a 66% chance of being pastel or albino,both traits inc/dom and recessive have the same statistical odds.

So if you raise all the females sired by a het and breed them back to dad.There is a 50% possible chance that she might be het.Which would give you a 25% chance of hatching an albino (again,per egg),and a 66% chance of the normals being hets too.

i gotta stop here...my fingers hurt now...lol
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Charles Glaspie

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke

Here is a somewhat different explanation, hopefully a little simpler.

First, genes come in pairs. So the normal snake has a pair of normal genes. Using A for the normal gene and a for the albino gene, the normal snake is AA. The heterozygous albino has a normal gene paired with an albino gene, Aa.

One member of each pair of genes goes into an individual egg or sperm. So a normal (A) gene goes into all of the normal snake's sperm (or eggs). Half of the heterozygous albino's eggs (or sperm) contain a normal (A) gene, and the other half of the eggs (or sperm) contain an albino (a) gene.

When a sperm and egg unite, the gene pairs are reformed. Statistically, half of the babies are AA, and the other half of the babies are Aa.

Both the AA and Aa babies look the same -- normal. That is why we say the albino mutant gene is recessive to the normal gene, because the presence of a normal (A) gene masks the presence of an albino (a) gene.

As we know that (statistically) half of the babies are heterozygous albino (Aa), but we can't tell them from the genetically normal (AA) babies, we call all the babies 50% probability heterozygous albino.

In the same way, breeding a normal to a heterozygous ghost produces normal looking babies that are 50% probability heterozygous ghosts. Breeding a normal to an animal that is heterozygous for any recessive mutant gene produces the same 50:50 results.

Paul Hollander

assuming you have a 100% het to start with you will get normal looking babies with a 50% chance of being het. A heterozygous animal is carrying 1 ressesive (lets say albino) gene for a specific trait and one normal gene. the normal animal carrys 2 normal genes. So each baby gets one normal gene from the normal parent and either a normal gene or an albino gene from the other. It takes 2 albino genes to get albino babies so there is no way you will get anything but normal looking babies. There is no real way to tell which gene was passed by the het parent (at least not anyhing you can do at home) so you will not know if the offspring are comletely normal or hets. The only way you are likely to find out is to wait and breed it to another het or an albino and see if you get albino babies. even that is not fool proof because it is always possible to breed a het to an albino and not get any albino babies. hope this helps.

go to this web site www.marcellpoots.com and he has a program that may be able to tell you what you might get.he has a program you can download for free.
Link

Check this website

Genetics wizard