How to make a Blue Eyed Lucy?

[Ranegyr]

okay okay wait a minute....

To be honest with you, you can't breed a relatively cheap snake with a normal and get amazing offspring. I mean, you can get a mojave ($200-400 ?), breed that to a normal, get some (50% chance) mojaves, and then after a few years you can breed those back and MAYBE produce some blue-eyed leucistics (25% chance).

This is just an example of how long it'll take...

i hope i put that in there right... but you are saying 2 mojaves "can" make a Blue Eyed Lucy? Minus the mathmatical probability, it's that simple? Can someone please clarify? I apologize if i am completely misunderstanding this, but it just looked weird.

I checked the NERD gallery and it says:

"Another dazzling member of the "White Ball Python Phenomenon," the Blue-Eyed Leucistic can be made from several different combinations. Thus far, these beautiful white gems have been produced from Lesser Platinum, Mojave, Phantom, and high-yellow animals from the Russo het Leucistic line. Some Blue-Eyed Leucistics have faint yellow dorsal striping, some may have a gray tinge to the head scales, and others have distinct ocular stripes. The most dramatic Blue-Eyed Leucistics are clean, pure white with startling blue eyes and no other pigmentation. Regardless of markings, it's easy to see why these splendid serpents have become a "Holy Grail" of ball python morphs! "

[southb]

Yes mohave x mohave has a chance of getting you some lucys......there are a few others as well like lessers etc.

[PythonWallace]

Mojave x Mojave
Lesser x Mojave
Butter x Mojave
Het Russo x Mojave
Lesser x Butter
Lesser x Lesser
Butter x Butter
Lesser x Het Russo
Het Russo x Het Russo
Butter x Het Russo
Lesser x Phantom
Butter x Phantom
possibly Mystics x Lessers or butters, but the Mystic x mojave is not a BEL.

Any one of these pairings has a 25% chance per egg of hatching a BEL.

[Ranegyr]

First off, thanks a lot for the breakdown Wallace.

NERD (not God but close enough) refers to BEL as the Holy Grail of Balls. With all these possible combo's, even at 25% shouldn't there be more? I mean for instance, 4.4 mojaves x 5 eggs per season that's at least 20 balls. I get worse odds at the casino, but i still play. How rare are these now? Is it possible that when they say Holy Grail they mean "prettiest" not the "most rare?"

[kc261]

I always interpreted "holy grail" in that write-up to mean "most sought after". However, I believe that was written at least a year or 2 ago. I'm not sure they would use that same phrase now. A lot of people are realizing that as pretty as a BEL is, a white snake is a dead-end for combos, so other genetics have more appeal for many people.

[blackcrystal22]

First off, thanks a lot for the breakdown Wallace.

NERD (not God but close enough) refers to BEL as the Holy Grail of Balls. With all these possible combo's, even at 25% shouldn't there be more? I mean for instance, 4.4 mojaves x 5 eggs per season that's at least 20 balls. I get worse odds at the casino, but i still play. How rare are these now? Is it possible that when they say Holy Grail they mean "prettiest" not the "most rare?"

It doesn't quite work that way...
BELs often times aren't even produced from a cross clutch. Like Het. Albino x Het. Albino you only have a 25% chance PER egg that it will be an Albino. Its the same with BELs.
It is completely possible to have 20 snakes, and none of them turn out to be BELs.. thats the chance of genetics.
Also, mass producing BELs would be very difficult and drown the market even more, so it's a bad idea.

Also, certain combos make better looking BELs than others. Of course, those are more expensive. Mojaves are probably the least cleanest looking BEL out there.
My favorite is the Fire's Black Eyed Lucy. However, I'm not willing to pay 12 hundred for a Fire, when I don't even like Fires that much..

If you purchased a Mojave, (lets say it was male) and bred it to a normal about 1-2 years later, you might get a female mojave to breed with it.. which it's a 50% chance per egg for both female and mojave.
Then you wait 2-3 more years to grow up the female, and breed her to the male.

You could get a BEL, or you could not.
And if you miss the first time, it's another 1-2 years before breeding again, depending on the female.

It takes 5-7 years to get these babies from a single gene. :]

[wolfy-hound]

Yes, but out of those 20 balls.. only 4-5 should come out BEL. That's the 25% part. One in four should come out BEL out of any of those pairings.
BUt.. the Egg Gods might not smile upon you.. and you could have no BELs.. or they might shine brightly and you get 50%.
I think a lot of folks hold back the females especially, so those would be more rare to see for sale. I have seen quite a few BEL for sale each season, and expect to see more this season for sure.
A lot of people are already disenchanted with all-white snakes.. since there are so many combos to make them. So those people are instead crossing the lessers/mojave/fires/etc into OTHER morphs to make new exciting combos. So all those possible BELs are lost by the possible breedings being made to other morphs, and so less BELs will be produced.
If the BEL was still the 'end-all' of ball breeding, I think we would see huge amounts this season. They are striking.. but as each combo that does produce a BEL made brighter cleaner luets, I think people were less interested in the former combo that made more muddy BELs.
Ivorys are a good example. When yellowbellys first produced the Ivory.. everyone screeched loudly about how "clean and bright" a white snake it was. But... later comes the lesser/lesser combo... which made what I believe is the cleanest of the BELs.. and now the ivory looks like a (pardon the term!!) "cheap knockoff" of the lesser BEL.

I personally like most of the luets.. and I like the ever so slight smudging that shows on the mojave/mojave BEL. Eventually all of the BEL prices will slowly drop, but it's still one of the most striking examples of a morph.

[blackcrystal22]

Yes, but out of those 20 balls.. only 4-5 should come out BEL. That's the 25% part. One in four should come out BEL out of any of those pairings.
BUt.. the Egg Gods might not smile upon you.. and you could have no BELs.. or they might shine brightly and you get 50%.
I think a lot of folks hold back the females especially, so those would be more rare to see for sale. I have seen quite a few BEL for sale each season, and expect to see more this season for sure.
A lot of people are already disenchanted with all-white snakes.. since there are so many combos to make them. So those people are instead crossing the lessers/mojave/fires/etc into OTHER morphs to make new exciting combos. So all those possible BELs are lost by the possible breedings being made to other morphs, and so less BELs will be produced.
If the BEL was still the 'end-all' of ball breeding, I think we would see huge amounts this season. They are striking.. but as each combo that does produce a BEL made brighter cleaner luets, I think people were less interested in the former combo that made more muddy BELs.
Ivorys are a good example. When yellowbellys first produced the Ivory.. everyone screeched loudly about how "clean and bright" a white snake it was. But... later comes the lesser/lesser combo... which made what I believe is the cleanest of the BELs.. and now the ivory looks like a (pardon the term!!) "cheap knockoff" of the lesser BEL.

I personally like most of the luets.. and I like the ever so slight smudging that shows on the mojave/mojave BEL. Eventually all of the BEL prices will slowly drop, but it's still one of the most striking examples of a morph.

I'm sorry, but this misconception bothers me quite a bit. After being beaten into my head in statistics, this statement is false.
Because each egg is independent from the other eggs, and does not have any statistical association, each egg has it's own .25 chance of being a BEL.
Just like flipping a coin. Each trial is independent, and after 1,000 trials or so, the 50/50 shows, but after 100, it may not and could be surprisingly off balance.
It is entirely possible that all 20 eggs could not produce a BEL. Just like it's possible (and likely!) to flip a coin and get tails 10 times in a row.

[wolfy-hound]

That's why I said "should". If each egg has a 25% chance.. then in real life the odds mean out of 20 eggs, you should end up with about 5 morphs. Yes, I know.. each egg has the same 25% chance.
If you flip the same coin the same way 100 times.. it SHOULD come out as 50 times heads, and 50 times tails. Saying 'that' in no way assumes that each coin toss is not completely independant of the one before or the one after. It is however a real life scenario.

[PythonWallace]

I'm sorry, but this misconception bothers me quite a bit. After being beaten into my head in statistics, this statement is false.
Because each egg is independent from the other eggs, and does not have any statistical association, each egg has it's own .25 chance of being a BEL.
Just like flipping a coin. Each trial is independent, and after 1,000 trials or so, the 50/50 shows, but after 100, it may not and could be surprisingly off balance.
It is entirely possible that all 20 eggs could not produce a BEL. Just like it's possible (and likely!) to flip a coin and get tails 10 times in a row.

That's not a misconception. It makes more sense to stick to the statistical odds than to assume differently. From any het BEL complex snake x Het BELs, if you get 20 eggs, 5 should be BELs. Each egg has the independant odds of 25% and that carries over to a clutch of 4 eggs, where the clutch then has a 25% chance, or statistically speaking, you should get one BEL from those four eggs. I'm not saying you will, but for every four eggs you have, one of them should be a BEL. While 4 is a very small sample size, those are still the odds. Out of 20 eggs, I'd bet you even money that you hatch between 3-7 BELs, with 5 being the average. The larger the sample group, the closer the odds tend to even out, as you said, but whatever the sample size is, the entire group still has the same 1 in 4 odds as every egg in it. Every probability per egg carries over to the sample size. If you have a 1 in 16 shot and 32 eggs, the only guess I would ever make as to the actual number of those I would hatch would be 2. To say anything else goes against basic logic. I hope this isn't coming off as harsh in any way, but my point is that I see a lot of people saying, "No, it's not 25% of the eggs should be so-and-so, each EGG has a 25% chance of it". Then people reply, "Oh, ok. Thanks". The odds for each egg carry over and become the same odds for the entire clutch or sample size.