Ok a question that has been on my mind...

[HeartAche]

I always see people breeding morph males to normal females, but never vice versa. Is there a reason for this other than the fact that females usually cost more? I have a normal male that I will eventually want to breed to some morph females but I wanted to check before i went ahead with that.

 

[jayefbe]

Here's the reasoning behind it. You can take a codom or dom morph male and breed him to MULTIPLE normal females and produce many of the same morph. However, a female can only be bred to one male (in some instances two males can sire a clutch, but it is not common) and can only produce so many eggs. Given the circumstances, females are always the limiting factor when it comes to number of eggs a breeder can produce.

Another way of looking at it, if you want 5 clutches of codoms you can either get one morph male and breed him to 5 normal females or one normal male and breed him to 5 morph females. Which would cost less?

Another factor to take into consideration is the fact that males mature much faster than females. Today it is not uncommon for males to be bred at 6 months of age or younger, while females take AT LEAST 18 months and more likely over two years to first breed successfully. Given the lower price of males, their quick maturity, their ability to breed multiple females, and their surplus in the industry it just makes much more sense to breed 1 morph male to normal females than vice versa.

I understand that you have a male and would like to breed him to morph females, but if I were in your shoes, I would just purchase a morph male and breed him to those morph females you were considering purchasing. You can get a beautiful pastel male today for under $200 bucks, and breeding him to morphs would substantially increase the quality and value of whatever you produce.

 

[Jerry_c_62]

What Joshua says makes sense.

There is not, however, any technical/ethical reason to not breed a normal male to a morph female or a normal female, for that matter. With that said I would go back to a point that Joshua made. With the lower cost, availability and quick rate of maturity of males why not pass on at least the chance of more desirable genetics?

Joshua's example of the pastel is a good one. Although you could get better than normal genetics for even less out of pocket by considering het males, if money is a concern (and isn't it a bit of a concern for everyone)? Some folks don't like to work with recessives, probably because of the need for a matched pair and the time to produce visual breeders. But even breeding het males to normal females gives you 50% poss. het offspring. Which is better than a normal and some of the 100% het males are almost the same price as normal males. I know of breeders that will give you a het male for free if you buy a het female (in certain morphs), as I see it that makes them cheaper than a normal

There are, IMO, enough normals generated in the breeding of hets, poss hets and codom morphs. So there is not much, if any, sense in breeding normal to normal, unless you wanted the breeding experiance and you have some friends that might like the males as pets. Female normals you would be able to market, more so if you cared for them until they were at or near breeding size/age. But I don't remember ever seeing any one boasting "100% normal male, nothing special about him" in any add.

 

[HeartAche]

Ok I see. My main problem was that I was thinking small scale breeding. The example of the 1 male and 5 females really cleared that up for me. Thanx Jerry and Josh. Now I just have to make an attempt at understanding the genetics and things. Would it be possible for me to say, breed a het mojave male to a normal female and they produce a mojave?

 

[Jerry_c_62]

Het is a term used for a recessive trait. Mojave is a co-dom trait.

Recessive is a trait that will show when both parents that have that genetic trait pass on that gene to the offspring. So both parents must pass on that gene for the offspring to show the trait.

Co-dom is a trait that will show about half the time if one parent has the trait. Pastel male bred to a normal female gives, on average 1/2 normal 1/2 pastel

Dominant is a trait that only needs one parent to have the trait (such as supers). A super pastel, bred to a normal, will give you a clutch of all pastels. A Lucy (super Mojave) will give you all Mojave's

 

[Jerry_c_62]

Some of the more common recessive traits are; Pied, Albino, Axanthic, Ghost.

Co-dom traits are; Mojave, Pastel and Spider

Dominant traits are mostly Supers. Super pastels bred to normals will produce all pastel clutch's. Ivories (Yellow Belly Supers) bred to normals will produce all Yellow Bellies.

 

[jayefbe]

Here's a more technical definition of the different types of traits and other important terms -

Heterozygous or het - the animal has different alleles at a certain locus. Generally this means that the animal has one normal and one morph gene copy. An example would be het for albino.

Homozygous - has two copies of the same allele at a certain locus.

Recessive trait - A trait in which the animal must be homozygous for the trait to show.

Dominant - A trait that is shown if the animal has at least one copy of the gene. Both heterozygous and homozygous animals for the gene in question look the same. Examples include spider and pinstripe morphs. Heterozygous and homozygous pinstripe and likely spider individuals look exactly the same. There is no super form with dominant traits, while there are super forms with codom traits.

Incomplete dominance or codom - A gene that has a different phenotype whether it is heterozygous or homozygous for the gene. Pastels and super pastels have the same mutated gene, only super pastels have two copies (are homozygous) while pastels are heterozygous (heterozygous). Super pastels are not actually dominant traits. While all the offspring of a super pastel will receive a pastel gene from the parent that is actually not what a dominant trait refers to.

 

[Jerry_c_62]

Thanks for the info Joshua, I thought I was clear on the dom/co-dom thing but I was off some. Glad you posted and helped ME understand that.

 

[HeartAche]

Thank you to both of you for clearing this all up for me. I was really confused but im starting to get it now

 

[anendeloflorien]

I'll definitely concur with what was said above as far as the thinking behind breeding co-dom males to normal females and I'd definitely recommend getting a pastel male if you already have morph females that are close to being ready to breed. Almost every morph is just made so much better by adding pastel in there.

That being said I just wanted to share a kind of funny/sad story . I was at one of the local reptile stores, one that I really like actually and I'm friends with the guy there but he was telling me that he's getting some pastel ball pythons in and he'd be selling them for about $100! So naturally I asked him if he had any females that he'd be selling for that price because you can never have enough pastel females IMO. He tells me, "yeah we'll probably have some females but with co-dom morphs like pastel you'll only get pastels if the male is the pastel" He went on to say that he'd bred a ton of pastel females and only ever gotten normals lol. I just thought that that was pretty funny .

And for anyone with genetics questions NO that is not how it works !