100% het pied pair...

So next week ill be getting a pair of 100 percent het for piedbald ball pythons. I plan on breeding them after they get to the right weight. I tried to use the genetic wizard but it only offers het pied not 25 percent 50 percent etc...

so I have a few questions..does it matter what percent het they are or are the potential offspring the same regardless of the %?

And if they're both 100% het does that mean all the babies will be pied?




Open to all knowledge and input. thx

Forgive me if you know this any of this already, but...

A het % doesn't mean that particular animal is partially het, it means that each (edit: non-visual hatchling) from the dam & sire's pairing has that % chance of being homogynous - or visual for that recessive. In your example (and all recessives) a 100% het pied x a 100% het pied means that each egg has a 25% chance of containing a pied hatchling. It also means that all non-visual hatchlings are 66% het pied. Some recessives have "markers" in the non-visual hatchlings, but they aren't always reliable.

A 100% het animal can only be produced from a visual recessive x anything else, so to have a 100% het hatchling one of the parents had to be visual.

Be very careful about choosing a breeder from whom you purchase hets...

Hope that helps!

That makes complete sense. thanks! So what exactly would it mean if something was 50 percent het?

It would mean that you have a 50% chance of the snake carrying the gene. In other words one of the parents was 100% het for the trait and the other parent didn't carry it. This way, there was a 50% chance that the gene was being passed on to the offspring. For instance, albinism is recessive, so we can label the gene as: a Normal would be labeled as: A

One parent does not carry the trait, so it is AA and can only pass on normal genes. The other parent would carry a gene for the trait, so it is Aa and has a 50% chance of passing on the gene for the recessive trait. With this example, all of the offspring would have a 50% chance of receiving the gene (a)

This is how I think of the hets and percentages.

A 100% het for Pied means that one parent WAS pied and one was not. Each and every baby absolutely carries the pied gene.

A 66% het pied is a little trickier. It means both parents were het pied, but because neither was a visual the odds change. For example, in a clutch of four eggs, statistically you will hatch one pied, two hets, and one non het. The trouble of course is that the het cannot be visually separated from the non hets. So you call those three babies 66% het, since statistically you have a two in three shot at the het.

A 50% het pied means one parent was het, one was not. This means in a four egg clutch, statistically two babies are het and two are not. But again, you can't tell them apart visually, so you say they are 50% het. There is a one in two shot at the het.

Each time you breed a het to a non het, the chances of hitting the het go down, and thus the percentages do as well.

If you bred a 50% het pied to a non het, then it drops to a 25% chance of hitting the het. And so on.

Gale