Breeding with a Normal BP + Other

[Bundu Boy]

Hey all

I'm just starting to look into breeding of BP's and although I probably won't start for a while I'd still like to start gathering info.

Now before anyone begins to question my motives I must let you know that I am an avid animal lover (but not the mushy type), I have a great appreciation for the value (not monetary)that animals can bring to our lives. I also work in the animal industry and come from an family of animal lovers, so I guess you can say it is inbred. What excites me is working with life (be it flora or fauna) and seeing it grow and progress, and as this happens so does my sense of achievement

After spending some time on this site I've become more and more fascinated with this species and degree of possibility you have when it comes to breeding. I see that a lot of people are striving to breed the next super 'morph', and I find this very exciting but not essential. For me, to be able to breed something that is not the norm, but is not one of a kind, is satisfying enough.

Currently I've got one normal male BP, Samson, who is still young at just about 4 months old. What I want to do is to start to get my head around how things would work if I wanted to breed him to a morph of one kind or another.

Say for example I bred him to an albino, would the babies be 50/50 split normal/albino, with the normals carrying the the gene for albino? A het-albino?

What recommendations would the pro's have out there to breed my male with? just to get the ball rolling so to speak?

[Freakie_frog]

To get any morph when bred to a normal you will need to use a dominate or co-dominate morph like pastel, spider, pinstripe, cinni ect.

When a normal is bred to a visual recessive gene like albino or clown or hypo all the babys will be 100% het for that gene.

I'd suggest checking this site out
WWW.ballpythons.ca

[Nate]

More specifically,

http://www.ballpythons.ca/genetics.html

It turns out, they use an albino in their recessive genetic demo too
http://www.ballpythons.ca/what_get/recessive.html

[soy.lor.n]

thirded... it depends on the particular morph- so if you still have questions after visiting that link, like if there's a particular morph you have in mind and want to know what you'll get out of breeding it to a normal, there will be all kinds of people to help
As for albinos, if a visual albino is bred to a normal, your offspring will all be the same, they will all be definite (or "100%" confidence) carriers for albinism, though none of them will be albinos

[soy.lor.n]

so actually....I wonder why they use the spider as their dominant trait, if it's not been proved to be true dominant yet, and there's all this mess about whether or not a homozygous spider exists...

[Bundu Boy]

OK, so all the babies would be normal looking (Normal x Albino).

Then if I bred a male and female from that clutch they'd all be albino/ or 50/50

I will have a look at those sites a bit later, I'm working right now so only have time to have a quick look at any replies - reading and digesting will come later

[OhBalls]

OK, so all the babies would be normal looking (Normal x Albino).

Then if I bred a male and female from that clutch they'd all be albino/ or 50/50

I will have a look at those sites a bit later, I'm working right now so only have time to have a quick look at any replies - reading and digesting will come later

25% albino
25% Normal
50% Het(making the normal looking ones 66% het for albinos)
as I understand it....which ain't sayin' much!

[soy.lor.n]

25% albino
25% Normal
50% Het(making the normal looking ones 66% het for albinos)
as I understand it....which ain't sayin' much!

right on
technically, these aren't percentages for the clutch- as in if you have 4 eggs, it's not promised that you'll have 1 albino, 1 normal, and 2 hets
but rather each EGG has a 25% chance for being normal or albino and 50% chance of being het (really just the difference between a probability and a guarantee)

The right way to do it is always to make a Punnett square http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punnett_square

NaxNa=

____N___a
N|__NN__Na
a|__Na__aa

[soy.lor.n]

NaxNa=

____N___a
N|__NN__Na
a|__Na__aa
I'm sure that's what I meant
NN=normal
Na=normal het albino
aa=albino

However, if you bred a normal to an albino and made a lot of het albinos, and then bred one of the hets BACK to the albino parent then you can have a 50% chance each egg will be an albino, and all the normal looking ones will be het for albino
so it's a pretty good deal...you have a male right now...if you were to get your hands on a female albino of breeding age, then those guys will give you hets, then if you get any boys in that clutch, you can breed them back to mom in only a year or so and get pretty good odds

[ctrlfreq]

I wonder why they use the spider as their dominant trait, if it's not been proved to be true dominant yet

The reason is because it's not been shown to have a super form. If one ever appears, it will be re-classified.

The really interesting debate has yet to come up, which is how you know which gene a particular co-dominant morph resides on. There very well could be a number of double-co-dominant supers that simply cannot exist because the different "morphs" are just mutated alleles of the same gene, and thus cannot appear homozygous in the same animal together.