Hey all. It's been a while. My hatching season has just started and what is coming out is confusing me more. First some history.

Six years ago I bred a Ghost male to my Stillwater Hypo female. The result of that breeding was a pot load of normal apparently triple het offspring. I sold all but kept two pairs. Last year I bred only one pair as I've been trying to cut back on how much I'm breeding. (Want to enjoy it instead of it being so much work). Anyway, the resulting clutch from this first pair blew me away. Out of 16 eggs, 3 of them were whiteside, 5 of them were normal appearing possible hets, and EIGHT of them were albino! What the??????????? Where is the albino coming from and in such numbers? Why didn't I get a single hypo? I kept 1.2 albinos back.

So, skip to this year. I didn't breed the first pair, instead electing to breed the second "virgin" pair. The eggs have just begun to hatch and the first three out are pictured below (there is another het out but it isn't in the pic). So far there is what appears to be a stillwater-type hypo, two possible hets, and a SNOW! What the??????? There is another hypoish head sticking out of an egg. Most of the rest are pipped, but heads aren't out yet.

Anyone want to venture a guess as to what is going on genetically with these two pairs? IF both of the grandparents were het for albino, wouldn't the F1 offspring have had some albinos? Let's say that I somehow had the crappiest odds ever and all of the F1 offspring were possible het albino. What are the odds that I SOMEHOW held back 2.2 het albinos out of a clutch of all possible hets? What are the odds of that? I'd say nearly impossible.

The only thing that I can think of is that the combination of the two hypos produces an albino looking animal, however in Mendelian terms, the numbers still don't add up. If that's the case, the snow that just hatched would have to be triple homozygous. Anyone confused yet? Me too.

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