Advices Needed...

[Atomic Animals]

Hi All,
I'm Phil Savarin of Atomic Animals, a professional breeding located in France 35km south of Paris.
I have some kind of quizz to expose to you. Please tell me what you're thinking about it.
You will find enclosed photos of 3 babies ball python females (and one of their mother) that are born to a friend's a while ago. As you will see one of them has a serious kink on the head.
The father is a BEL (Lesser x Lesser) that I hatched in 2011. This snake is the son of parents that are also coming from me and which are of a "special" line of Lesser I hatched some years ago from parents I still keep.
I'm saying "special" cause when I breed one normal looking Lesser male (I bought in Canada some years ago) to a Normal looking female (coming from M&S reptilien and bought as a baby in 1997) which is very big and very "clean" in pattern and colour, that always gives me very "light" in colour Lesser that really don't have nothing to envy to a Pastel Lesser even if, as you'll have understood, there's no Pastel in it. In addition to this light colour, the pattern is very concentrated on the back of the body, leaving the sides "nearly without" pattern.
I've kept nearly all the babies this pair produced except a few including the BEL sold to my pal.
That guy bred the BEL with a Genetic Stripe female and as the result should have been some Lessers 100% Het GS, it finally has nothing to do with that...
As the male is coming from me, I know there's no GS gene in it and even if it was the case, the babies don't look like Lesser Genetic Stripe.
So I guess, with of course being not sure of anything, that it's coming from some kind of hidden gene carried by the babies from the original female...
And maybe that hidden gene reacts with GS gene and that's why the babies are looking like this?
It could have been coming from the original Lesser male as I did not breed him, but once more the babies don't look like Lesser GS balls.

I expect to breed the original female to a GS, what would you do if you were in that situation ?

Thanks for your time and advices.

Phil
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[Pythonfriend]

i think these are all genetic stripe, you lucked out. genetic stripes can have a bit of a side pattern, yours have quite a lot, still, i say they are genetic stripe.

what makes it really confusing is that since the male is supposed to be super lesser.... where is the lesser gene? sperm retention maybe?

it would be easier to explain if these would look like lesser genetic stripe, as such things do happen.

check this henry piorun video, where he bred possible double heat lavender albino pieds to each other, and got a clutch with lavender albino, pied, and axanthic. and there wasnt even a visual axanthic involved. it turned out one of the parents is also possible het axanthic, that somehow got passed on, and his double hets turn out to be not just double hets, but triple hets, lavender albino pied axathic. video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bACfIfdd-Sg

but in your case, really, where did the lesser gene go? unless others here contradict me and say they see lesser at work here as well, i say some sperm got retained from an earlier breeding, if that is possible.

[OhhWatALoser]

I agree, I don't believe the BEL to be the father.

[Ladybugzcrunch]

Third pic looks like a lesser g-stripe to me. Lets see the dad and parents of dad.

[Atomic Animals]

Thanks for your replies.
Sperm retention seems a good idea to explain it but I just called my friend to ask him if he ever bred the GS female to some males since she's born and he told me that the only male he bred it to is a Caramel (I sold him and coming from Mark Mandic's stock). He had ten eggs from this pairing last year and all the babies were normal looking DH Caramel / GS.
I can ask Mark if there's a chance that his Caramel is Het GS but even if it was the case, it would be really strange that last years babies were all normal looking and that one year later the same "sperm" has given birth to a clutch of 100% GS babies...