need some info

hello everyone out there. i just need to know some info. just the basic genetics of ball python hets. how do u determine if the ball python offspring is het for some sort of morph. how do u know if its 100% or 66% or even 30%. im just very curious to know. so if anyone has the time to answer this question please do. thank you and enjoy your life.

Ball python Morphs

You won't be able to tell unless you have paperwork stating that your ball is a 100% het for a given morph, and if it is a possible het , the only way is to breed it with a known het or a morph of the same as your het to see if it proves out... Check out Strictly snakes website, they have a genetics breakdown for figuring possible het determination at www.strictlysnakes.com.. Good Luck!!! I just bought a 100% het piebald ball...

There are a couple ways to tell if a ball python is heterozygous for a particular morph (i.e. if it has one mutant copy of that gene and one normal copy of that gene).

If it's some kind of a dominant gene like pastel, mojave, spider, or pinstripe then you can tell the hets by looking at them because even the hets are mutants (jury seems to still be out on what homozygous spider or pinstripe will look like or if it's even possible).

If it's a recessive gene like albino then you could identify a het through breeding results. I bred to ball pythons together and produced albinos so I know that both parents are hets. In order to make an albino both parents must have at least one copy of the gene so that the albino baby can get two copies of the albino gene. With a het X het breeding each baby has a 25% chance of getting the mutant gene from both parents and being a mutant so you still need some luck to hit that 25% chance and the more eggs you have the more chances you get.

Another way to identify hets and also possible hets is based on the parents. If you know the parent's genes you can predict the offspring's genes. In my case it wasn't a complete surprise that this pair could produce albino based on their ancestry.

Homozygous recessive mutant X normal = 100% chance hets: One of the great grandfathers was an albino that NERD bred to a normal female. Since the albino didn't have any normal copies of the albino gene (both copies are albino to make the albino appearance) NERD knew that the male he sold me was for sure a het.

Het X normal = 50% chance hets: I bred the NERD 100% chance het albino male to a normal female in 2000 and produced 4 daughters that I know had a 50/50 chance of being hets. Their het father has one albino mutant copy of the albino gene and one normal copy of that gene. It’s a roll of the dice as to which copy he gives each baby. Until this mother (daughter of the NERD het male) produced albinos she was considered a 50% het but after she was proven a 100% het.

Het X Het = 66% chance het (after the homozygous are removed): The father of the albinos was produced by breeding two known hets together. Once you take the visible albinos out of such a clutch the normal looking ones are considered 66% chance hets because they have twice as much chance of getting the albino gene from one of the het parents as getting the normal gene from both.

By knowing that 3 of the 8 combined grandparents of my pair where albinos I knew that I had a 66% chance to 50% chance het albino pairing. Once I saw the albinos in the eggs I knew both had hit there chances and both are now proven 100% chance hets.