Thoughts for Clown morphs....

I just hatched a female clown and super pastel 66% het clown, so I'll be looking for a nice male for them next year.

everyone that's talking about breeding their visual clown to female morphs to make some kind of morph het clowns. are these females virgins? you do know that even when a female lays she can still retain sperm.
a lot thinks that if a female had eggs to this male this year. if I breed him to the clown next year they will all be 100% het for clown. they might be and then they might not be. you can't be sure and a lot of breeders do this and sell them as 100% hets.
I'm planning on getting a male desert ghost (recessive) and I'm already picking out yearling (females) that will be for this breeding only. since we're talking about hets, this would be some good info to throw out there.

I have 4 virgins.... one Spider and 3 Normals.

I have a virgin Pastel, but I already threw my 1.0 Pied to her.... no idea I would have gotten into Clowns or I would have saved her.

My 1.0 Clown will see a few normals at least. The Spider is really being saved in hopes that my FireButter makes plugs soon, or she will see the Clown. Im really wanting a Nuclear Spider and that would possibly get me a Nuclear Spider Clown down the road.

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Originally Posted by don15681

everyone that's talking about breeding their visual clown to female morphs to make some kind of morph het clowns. are these females virgins? you do know that even when a female lays she can still retain sperm.

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I agree with the virgin part, that is a very good point and crucial if you want to guarantee your hets.
I'm not so sure on retaining when they dropped eggs the previous year though, if that has happened it has to be extremely rare, but lets just say I'm skeptical.

I bet you'll find many breeders breeding recessive traits to females that gave them eggs the previous year.
I have bred virgins to make all of my morph hets except this year I'm doing bumblebee again to clown.
She went last year but was bred to our clown and delivered a sweet clutch.

Colin Weaver has a great article when dealing with breeding recessives. I don't have the link handy, but it is on his site.

I would not stake my name on a 100% sure Het if I bred it to a something else the prior year. Maybe just me, but I want to be sure the female Het I waited 2-3 years for is really a 100% Het.

I would be more upset if a customer found out down the road it was not a 100% Het.

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Originally Posted by snakesRkewl

I agree with the virgin part, that is a very good point and crucial if you want to guarantee your hets.
I'm not so sure on retaining when they dropped eggs the previous year though, if that has happened it has to be extremely rare, but lets just say I'm skeptical.

I bet you'll find many breeders breeding recessive traits to females that gave them eggs the previous year.
I have bred virgins to make all of my morph hets except this year I'm doing bumblebee again to clown.
She went last year but was bred to our clown and delivered a sweet clutch.

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we always thought the same that if they dropped eggs, you could breed to what ever.until a breeder that I know had this happen to him. it wasn't a ball python but a python. So I wrote V.P.I. and asked about this topic, retaining sperm even after laying. and I spelled it out about breeding a recessive male to a female after that female dropped eggs. tracy email me back the same day confirming this. and also knows a few breeders that this has happen to. getting hatchlings from the male that the female was bred to and had eggs between the two breedings. is it rare, I hope so. but can you call them 100% if you breed this way? I don't think so.

Does the same thing apply to male recesive breeding with a normal femle (example) that last season bred with different male - and can you tell that all normals from this clutch are 100% hets? Or you should not since you don't know if that's not retained sperm from last years male?
This is pretty interesting topic I guess :).

IMHO parthenogenesis happens semi regularly in ball pythons so the only way to be absolutely sure of your hets is if someone would develop a commercial paternity test.

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Originally Posted by GPreptiles

Does the same thing apply to male recesive breeding with a normal femle (example) that last season bred with different male - and can you tell that all normals from this clutch are 100% hets? Or you should not since you don't know if that's not retained sperm from last years male?
This is pretty interesting topic I guess :).

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if you bred a virgin normal female to a few different recessive males (clown, albino, ghost ect..) and had eggs. most likely they are 100% hets. but het for what is what you will then need to find out. parthenogenesis happens, semi regularly, I'm not sure about that, but if it is, I would like to see the studies on parthenogenesis in snakes. from what I read, it's more common in reptiles but still a rare occurance and the hatchlings would all be females. so the only way that for sure you have 100% hets is if the female is the recessive that you're trying to breed for. example if you're trying to get pastel clowns, if the mother is the clown and father super pastel then they all would be pastel 100% het clowns.

One would know if parthenogenesis happened because all of the offspring would be exact copies of the dam.
So if you breed a clown male to a mojave female, all of the offspring would be female mojaves.
At that point I'm assuming you'd have to hold them all back or sell them as regular mojaves