Heterozygous traits, how much would you pay for 100% reassurance?

I am also working out if sheds are viable instead of scale clips.

Ben, that was my initial thought. I agree with you that it might be easy to forge. The only way that I had though around it was that the seller should provide a sample of the shed of the sire and/or dam with the offspring he sells, and then the buyer could run a DNA sequence on the shed of the animal he received if he wants to confirm if it came from that animal. Again it all boils down to the credibility of the seller.

Regards.

Yeap, the seller could send you an different shed if you were testing for a secondary mutation het on a ghosts, ivories, lucies, background and would never know if the shed was the same animal, also the new owner is unlikely to pay a $100-150 fee, plus the pain in the butt of getting the same to and from the testing company. People aren't going to it for het albinos, or het ghosts, and if you are out there spending 10-20 grand on a morph you are usually getting it from a longtime breeder-not a reseller-which is unfortunately where the most scamming is.

Where I saw the biggest gain was I could offer services to big producers who then could make decisions on what animals to keep for grow outs and which ones not to bother with when making poss double hets and whatnot.

Thanks
ben cole

Even though the forgery mentioned is a definate probability, in a lot of ways it could be used for good still. Example would be "possible" hets. Being Het, DH, or TH all would sell for more money, it would eliminate the "possibilties" and give you the "knowns". Especially if planning a certain project. You simply keep the "known" mutant carriers. In the case of "possible" TH's, it would show exactly which mutant gene they are or aren't het for, and the animals could be priced accordingly, instead of trying to barter more on the gamble.

It could certainly reduce the time somewhat, on special gene combos, various people may be thinking of.

Still need to depend on the integrity of the seller no matter what, but the service could still be useful in other ways. To me it would be worth a $150 to know if this one or that one have the genes I hope they have.


Rick

Where I saw the biggest gain was I could offer services to big producers who then could make decisions on what animals to keep for grow outs and which ones not to bother with when making poss double hets and whatnot.

That's exactly right. Imagine a breeder being able to know if he is raising or not a 100% hetero. Investing $150 or even $500 in testing is pocket change compared with what he would save in time and money by not having to raise and prove out a "normal" for a couple of generations!

Regards

There is one arguement that a little guy put forth about it thought that I thought was kinda funny. Showed me he was thinking but not in a good way.

It seems that most of us would be very gung-ho about getting these testing procedures worked out for each morph but look at a clutch of clown poss het ghost balls you just produced. They are really pricey you get the test done and you figure out which ones to keep for yourself, but now the rest of your "poss hets' are proven to be just clowns. Still a good payday but you have knocked of several grand off each one that turned out to not be poss het. So instead of tellling the public you had them tested, you sell them as poss hets anyway to get the extra cash, the breeding was there to make poss hets, the parental lineage is there to produce hets, but you are skimming them before they hit the public.

This scenario and the scenario we talked to before about forging documents is just a drop in the bucket in scams around this. Also a breeder could sell true hets, then a scummy buyer, sends a clip in from a normal, gets a normal result and trashes the original seller or wants a refund when in fact he has the real het tucked away in the corner.

If there is a system someone will find a way around it. So to use this as a public selling point it would be difficult, for in house purposes it would be invaluable. Also it could help on the legal end of cases like TSE and his het scam. We have had to wait years and let people have mutliple clutches to proven TSE was selling crap. Well if we had this technology right now, I could test all TSE derived animals and hand the judge a portfolio of 200-300-400 proofs that he was selling fakes, instead of a 1/2 dozen in a clutch here and 9 in a clutch over there as we wait for them to be produced.

And as morphs get cheaper the price gets prohibitive to the public, and then will get so that it would be cheaper just to pay the extra 30 bucks from a true blue breeder who has been in the game for 20 years than getting that super buy from joe bloe flea market guy.

Anyone interested in my progress can keep in touch with me through my email bcherps@yahoo.com.

Thanks
ben

Anyone interested in my progress can keep in touch with me through my email bcherps@yahoo.com.

Ben,

I'm really interested. The more we "play around" with this, the closer we will be to a fool proof solution. Of course, and as you say, there are people who are not interested in such a test as it would ruin the "possible heterozygous market". But in my opinion this is what the future holds, unless of course something happens with the market, and the overall value of reptiles drops to what it used to be in the pre-mutant era.

Regards.

Well, many of the ball morphs have gone from 5k last fall, to 2500 after the 06 production, and are now 500-900 without the 07's out yet. So who knows what they will be. Also, we are looking for several dozen mutations on a couple of different genes anyhow. Things that seem similiar to our eyes may be vastly different on the genetic level and somethings that are very different may have common areas where the genome is not normal.

Pied, ringer, calico/sugar all may be the gene, same mutation with different amounts of code messed up. But something like albino and caramel albino may be completely different genes


Also some of the designers where the actual animals that produce them may have look alikes is going to be a problem. I.e granites. I have an enitre rack of granites that I got in 03, they are all different than the granites I see on the web and at every show. Then I hear people say that a granite has to have this and that, but this mark over hear doesn't matter if this one here is present-but in all actuality how many of them have produced ebonies, and how many people proffessing about granites have produced ebonies at home? It may turn out that what is responsible for combining with the yellow belly may be something completely different than what is causing in a granite ball having a granite pattern

We'll see, but usually science turns a few "commo knowledge ideals" upside down as new things are discovered.

thanks
ben

How about the question of sperm retention?
In ball pythons there have been a few reports along the lines of breeding a pastel male to normal female one year, then breeding her to a Mojave the next year and getting a few mojaves and a pastel in the clutch. Sperm retention seems to be a reality based on these anecdotal reports.
There was some speculation that a paternity-type test would be cheaper-easier than actually checking the genotype.
So, I bred several het piebald females to het males for the past few years… Hatched out some pieds and everything is moving along nicely. Now I’ve raised up a few male pieds for breeders. How can I absolutely, 100% guarantee that the normal-looking offspring from this breeding season will be 100% het? With the possibility of sperm retention, it would seem a bit of a risk to make such a guarantee.
Sure, if about half of the offspring are piebalds I will know my pied males did their job, but I won’t necessarily know that all the other hatchlings are 100% het. To me, the option of a paternity test would be of significant value. Please let us know if there is anything new to report on this topic.
Paul Fisher

Your questions/concerns are valid. A paternity is simpler, and has been currently available technology wise for a couple of years. I don't know any company offering it as a standard service though.

Quick and dirty answer-if you are breeding the females to a homozygous male(and the morph is well documented, proven to be viable, and has had no suprises elsewhere), then the paternity test is accurate

this post is very long winded and comes back to point at the end.

However, if you are dealing with a new morph, undocumented/low produced doubles-triples-or more, mutations with other effects to the body other than pattern or color. The only way to absolutely confirm is to breed it and produce living proof. The next statements are very very very broad as you could write several text books, college classes, and several Ph D. worthy projects out of what is really needed to prove the following or at least outline it correctly.

There are all sorts of other things at play into genetics, and embrionic development that are not cut and dry. So you could produce a het, that tests positive as being a het genotypically, but due to other factors(such as embryonic lethality, floxed genes, down regulation, sympathetic factors, secondary mutation) you never see a mutant/visual morph produced from it. We have a few lines of mice like this that the lab I am in works with. We have to bring the gene in through the male side or it is embryonically lethal. We also have other lines of mice that when we breed het to het, we only see the mutation if a second and different gene mutation is there that allows the first mutation to express.

Or (broad generalization here) in pied, you have a 90% and a 10% white-whats the difference? They are both the same genotype, however, one animals ability to produce normal coloration and pattern was severely reduced and the other wasn't. This could(broad speculations here) be due to how early in development that the cells/hormones/chemicals that derive normal color are blocked. Also some pieds the "normal" areas are normal, other pieds have "normal areas" coloration and pattern that are really aberrant. Is this(broad speculation) the area of epithelial tissue that was effected genetically and going to be white, but then surrounding epithelial cells had a sympathetic effect in embryonic development and tried to "fix" the area?

In embryology the parents genes are a starting point, and external factors can shift/effect what happens next until the point of birth. In animals that carry the babies full term things like diet and the toxins contained within, inhaled pollutants, depression-which effects hormones, micronutrients all can affect the outcome a baby. Well in reptiles that lay eggs we see all of the above but also then through in temperature, humidity of the eggs environment, co2/o2 saturation in the eggs environment can also shift the outcome of a baby.

Also in ball pythons, corns, and leopard geckos there is a lot of mutations that have names that are super similiar, and may be the same mutation but with a slightly varied set of background dna or modifier genes. So our human definitions/names may be causing us to unduly put things into wrong categories, or incorrectly relate some animals. Like pied and calico, both have something that causes scales to be white, it is organized in pied and dispersed in calico. It may be the same mechanism with a different secondary change , or it may be completely different mechanism that shows up as similiar phenotypes

Also random mutation can pop up at anytime that does who knows what, and isn't always visable/phenotypic so we can never rule that out. So you may have a cut and dry breeding that suddenly turns out new looking offspring, or suddenly blocks the mutation that has been passed down unchanged for 10 generations.
For example: I have a massive but young female boa that has this great big old head that reminds me of a bulldog. I breed her every year to a male albino that has very thin and refined features, but yet most of the babies come out with block heads. So I cannot say whether the animals will produce block headed babies 2 or 10 or 40 generations from now-only that I bet I get a bunch of block heads this year.(new co-dom right LOL) Although rattlesnake guys have well documented that a baby EBD head will grow proportionally to what you are feeding it. Lots of little meals equals a little head, infrequent large meals and you get a big head.

So just becuase you breed a pied to a normal does not Absolutely 100% guarantee that you will have het offspring that can in turn produce pieds. However, being a snake person, and a person of odds, I would be shocked if any of the above variables happened and you didn't produce 100% hets. Pieds have been bred enough and in enough species(people, horses, several species of birds, a couple species of snake, lots of rodents) that we are almost guaranteed that a pied x normal breeding will result in hets that can eventually produce pieds.

Back to the retained sperm issue. In my opinion a mixed litter is very rare on the whole. Yes, we have heard about it, we have also heard about parthenogenisis for a long time, and bicephalic snakes. I have seen multiple examples of both. However, between my own colony and 3 of my closests friends I see almost 600 clutches per year. But if you figure the number of clutches intentionally produced, accidentally produced, and gravid females that are imported and drop of all the species we see. The number of each of these aberrancies is very very small.

However, an easier, and probably less expensive way to go about it is to
stand behind your animals. Keep good records, know what you bred(don't get to the fall of 07 and go what did I breed this girl to last year), keep photos of your babies and sales record so in three years you don't get a reverse scam on you.

Sorry that there is about a million topics in here, I went to the coffee shop just before logging on.LOL

Thanks
ben cole

Thanks Ben, high octane coffee there but lots of interesting information! I enjoyed the read!
It may be worthwhile to kick the idea around with some horse & dog people about actually getting the test done with snakes. I imagine we would need a good baseline sample group to verify accuracy of a paternity test for snakes. That would cost some $ and may get back to Dan's original inquiry about what would it be worth to us. Interesting topic though...
BTW, I keep lots of pictures and documentation!
Paul