breeding albinos :D

ok so, I'm going to attempt breeding my first clutch this season (hopefully buying 2 100% albino hets from nerd) and I know nerd has an amazing rep and I was just wondering what my chances were of getting any high contrast albinos (or any albinos at all) like is it a 50/50 kinda thing?

25% Albino
50% Het Albino ( normal looking )
25% Normal

all normal looking would be 66% Hets ( 'cause you dont know what two are in fact the hets )

in theory !

Nerd certainly has a good rep. But their pet shop, zoo creatures, has poor (rude) customer service. good luck though!

high contrast are different from albinos from my understanding. you would need to ask for het. high contrast.

:D either way! yay! another that may be making albino's this upcomming breeding season

Question on albino breeding... Not too sure on the whole genetics thing but i know albinos are a recessive trait... if you were to mix a male albino with say a spider... int theory you would get 25% normals 25% albinos 25% spiders and 25% albino spiders? Can you mix an albino with pretty much anything and get something cool? or is it hit or miss with the recessive trait?

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Originally Posted by JoshJP7

Question on albino breeding... Not too sure on the whole genetics thing but i know albinos are a recessive trait... if you were to mix a male albino with say a spider... int theory you would get 25% normals 25% albinos 25% spiders and 25% albino spiders? Can you mix an albino with pretty much anything and get something cool? or is it hit or miss with the recessive trait?

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You wouldn't get albinos or albino spiders with that pairing, unless the spider itself was het-albino.

You'd get some normals and some spiders and all would be 100% het for albino.

Ya thats what I was thinking... So pretty much youd have to breed an albino to a spider... get some het albino spiders then breed em back to get your albinospiders and some albinos... Hets are time consuming!!!

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Originally Posted by JLC

You wouldn't get albinos or albino spiders with that pairing, unless the spider itself was het-albino.

You'd get some normals and some spiders and all would be 100% het for albino.

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exactly. it would require breeding an albino to a spider that was het for albino. or prehaps two spiders with 100% het to albino.

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Originally Posted by JoshJP7

Hets are time consuming!!!

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Yep. they certainly are...but the reward of proving out morphs is priceless.

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Originally Posted by JoshJP7

Hets are time consuming!!!

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:yes: As is anything worth doing. ;)

The one thing I dont like about hets is that you really need to get em from someone you trust. It would be so easy for someone to sell you a het and pull a quick one on you only to find out 2-3 yrs down the road it was het for nothing... Also its gotta be hard as a small breeder to get people to buy hets from you for the same reason... They dont know if they can trust you. I love albinos but I think if i ever pic one up itll just be a pet not a breeder bc Ive seen some sexy looking albinos out there!!

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Originally Posted by JoshJP7

The one thing I dont like about hets is that you really need to get em from someone you trust. It would be so easy for someone to sell you a het and pull a quick one on you only to find out 2-3 yrs down the road it was het for nothing... Also its gotta be hard as a small breeder to get people to buy hets from you for the same reason... They dont know if they can trust you. I love albinos but I think if i ever pic one up itll just be a pet not a breeder bc Ive seen some sexy looking albinos out there!!

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i would not think it were hard for a small breeder. i plan on photo documenting everything, and providing possible purchasers that the 100% het that they will be reimbursed to the full amount for a snake should it turn out i 'lied'. now, granted, chances are even two 100% or an albino to a 100% may not yield an albino in the first breeding and even after.
if nothing else, the BOI would fillet your reputation and you really do not want that as a small starting breeder.

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Originally Posted by JoshJP7

Hets are time consuming!!!

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Like others, I would like to comment on this quote, as well as add a little bit of my experience to this entire thread.



Odds are odds only, and not always what you get when breeding. Here are two scenarios for you to ponder. These will be directed at the above phrase.



Scenario 1

In 2004 I bought an Albino male and a Het Albino female. In the 05/06 breeding season, I bred my Albino to my Het. female and a Normal female. The normal female did not give me any eggs. On the other hand, I was very excited about the 7 eggs I got from my Het Albino female. During incubation, 1 egg went bad, leaving me 6 eggs. No problem I thought, odds say I will get 3 Albinos. WRONG! I got 1 badly deformed Albino that died half way out of the egg and 5.0 Het Albinos. What, no female Het to hold back. You got it. I then called a buddy and bought 2 more Het Albino females.

Now to the 06/07 season. I bred my Albino to my original Het Albino female(proven breeder) that weighed 2300 grams. I also bred him to a proven Normal female. Guess what, the Het Albino female decided to take the year off, and my Normal proven breeder female laid 6 eggs. Awsome I thought, now I can hatch a Het Albino female. Well 2 of the 6 eggs were infertile and 2 of the eggs went bad about 2 weeks into incubation. Well of the remaining 2 eggs, we got 2.0 Het Albinos.

Summary: I started my Albino project in 2004 and to date have yet to hatch an Albino that lived or a Het. Albino female to hold back to grow my project. Sometimes things like this happen.



Scenario 2



In 2005 I bought a Het Caramel Albino and later that year bought a 2004 Het Caramel Albino female from a different guy. The Het Female didn't eat all that great, so she did not breed until the 06/07 breeding season. Well this year she laid 5 eggs for us. I was excited to say the least. I really wanted to hatch a Caramel. Well prior to the female ovulating, I had bought a yearling Caramel male, as I needed him to breed to some other females this year, in case I didn't hatch a Caramel. (the Caramel male was never used in the breeding of my Het female.) I figured we would get 1 Caramel Albino out of the clutch, because ODDS say 25% chance or 1 in 4 eggs, depending on how you look at it. The eggs pipped and guess what, we hatched 2.2 Caramel Albinos and 0.1 66% Poss. Het. Caramels. Man were we happy.



To conclude we have 2 recessive projects and reached the ultimate goal with our Caramel project before we did with our Albino project, and we started the Caramel project a year later and did not have a homozygous animal in the project. All I am trying to do by sharing our experience is to help others realize that when working with any recessive project, time is always going to be a factor, and sometimes these projects take time and patience to get them to fruition.

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Originally Posted by anthrpicdecadnce

Nerd certainly has a good rep. But their pet shop, zoo creatures, has poor (rude) customer service. good luck though!

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OT, but surely not all the time? prehaps you just caught someone on a bad day?

I started my albino project with a possible het male in 1995. Through a series of mishaps and selling animals I should have kept etc the closest I've gotten so far to producing albinos was two kinked dead in the egg ones in 2003. I might have another shot next year with what basically would be my 4th generation animals. It really shouldn’t take you decades but be sure it’s something you like doing just in case it does.

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Originally Posted by JoshJP7

Hets are time consuming!!!

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Breeding is all about patience, and patience shall be rewarded ;) !

Tim thank you for sharing your experience... sounds like youve had some rough times with the albinos! I give you props for not throwing the towel in... i guess the only way your going to get what ya want if you keep trying. Your stories make me wanna stock up on females just to make sure i get something to hatch out!

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Originally Posted by JoshJP7

Tim thank you for sharing your experience... sounds like youve had some rough times with the albinos! I give you props for not throwing the towel in... i guess the only way your going to get what ya want if you keep trying. Your stories make me wanna stock up on females just to make sure i get something to hatch out!

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Josh,
I'll never throw in the towel on any project, as I love these animals too much. I have enjyed watching many a snake pip from the egg, and still cannot wait for that first Albino to pip. My moto has always been to keep an army of females on hand, so I definitely won't argue with your plan.

Do you find its more challenging breeding recessives over doms n co doms? or is it the same challenge across the board? I feel like ive read about more people having problems getting what theyre shooting for with recessives but Id assume its the same challenge anyway you look at it.

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Originally Posted by RandyRemington

I started my albino project with a possible het male in 1995. Through a series of mishaps and selling animals I should have kept etc the closest I've gotten so far to producing albinos was two kinked dead in the egg ones in 2003. I might have another shot next year with what basically would be my 4th generation animals. It really shouldn’t take you decades but be sure it’s something you like doing just in case it does.

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Over 10 years of cleaning and feeding and still no visual? You could have just saved your quarters and bought 3 or 4 by now!

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Originally Posted by JoshJP7

Do you find its more challenging breeding recessives over doms n co doms? or is it the same challenge across the board? I feel like ive read about more people having problems getting what theyre shooting for with recessives but Id assume its the same challenge anyway you look at it.

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Breeding is breeding and isn't all that difficult if you're armed with the right tools and good information.

Co-doms are nice to work with because of the "instant gratification" factor...a visual male can breed several normal females and you can get a handful of visual morphs in your first clutches.

Recessives are just harder to work with because 2 copies of the mutant gene must be present in order to produce a visual animal. The odds aren't as much in your favor when you're working with heterozygous animals. Farther along in your project though, when you start working with homozygous x heterozygous crosses, the odds are back up to 50%... and up to 100% when you do homozygous x homozygous.

wait so if I breed a co dom or dom to my normal female ill get visual morphs in that clutch? haha ive been researching this for a while.. I guess I miss read something somewhere..

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Originally Posted by Kennyxemerson

wait so if I breed a co dom or dom to my normal female ill get visual morphs in that clutch? haha ive been researching this for a while.. I guess I miss read something somewhere..

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Yes, if you breed a co-dom (pastel, spider, lesser, mojave, etc) to a normal you should, statistically speaking, hatch about 50% that are visual morphs of the co-dom. In other words, if you hatch 4 eggs from breeding a spider to a normal, you should get 2 spiders and 2 normals. These are the odds, but you may get 0 spiders or all 4 spiders as has been mentioned above. Hope that helps.

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Originally Posted by JoshJP7

Ya thats what I was thinking... So pretty much youd have to breed an albino to a spider... get some het albino spiders then breed em back to get your albinospiders and some albinos... Hets are time consuming!!!

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Good things come to those who wait :)

haha wow. I suck. I deffinatly misread something a few months back. wow. whole new game now.

Dont go through NERD. Yes they are quality animals and the guy is a legend in the ball python world. He is so stuck up. They act like they are better then everyone. Yes they have a reason to be, but they should act on it. Maybe that was my own personal experience but i think you should spend a little less money for through an even nicer person and go through 8ballpythons.com. Adam is incredibly nice and helpfull. Call him up and talk to him trust me!