The risk of Hets?

Well when I was at the show today, I saw a 2.2 group of 50% het pied for $325. I took a long look at them, but I'm looking to buy tomorrow since sometimes prices go down.

I know that 50% het means each egg has a 50% chance of being 100% pied. Now, being new to ball pythons(in my first year) and breeding, do you think this would be a good buy, or to much of a risk for $300?

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Originally Posted by Nagini88

I know that 50% het means each egg has a 50% chance of being 100% pied. Now, being new to ball pythons(in my first year) and breeding, do you think this would be a good buy, or to much of a risk for $300?

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This is wrong...it means that each snake has a 50% chance of carrying the genes needed to produce a pied. You need a male and a female to each have these genes. So the odds are not in your favor...you will be breeding for years to come the get the right combination of male and female to produce a pied from this set...or you might get lucky and hit it the first pairing. There in lies the risk.

yea this is a long shot... it's pretty much like buying an expensive normal.

the only advice i can give is start off with a visual morph (pastel, spider, mojave ect.). there is not only a risk of not producing a visual when breeding hets, but what about the offspring. you'll have a bunch of possible hets to try and sell, and how many people out there would buy a het from someone that doesn't even own a visual of that het. maybe its just me but i think working with hets is best left till you get some experience and get your name out there.

thats what I thought and why I didnt buy then and there. I'd love a pied, but visiables are 2,400+ and 100% hets(with papers) are 800+ per pair ><

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Originally Posted by Nagini88

thats what I thought and why I didnt buy then and there. I'd love a pied, but visiables are 2,400+ and 100% hets(with papers) are 800+ per pair ><

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You can always buy them as a dinking project (but I would only pay like they were normals)...just don't get your hopes up...if you produce a pied that is great...but if not then you aren't out much more then time.

Yeah, from what I'm seeing though even female possible het pieds are up there in price. I can find males the price of normals that are phets.

2.2 for $300 isn't bad at all. You're essentially getting 0.2 and you can consider the males for free. You can keep the males as pets or sell them as normals, but it would be worth the risk to get a het male or even a full pied male when the time comes to breed the females.

Let's say you did get them. You seperate them for breeding, one male gets one female, the other male gets the other female. If from both clutches you get all normal looking babies then chances are none are het. However, maybe it was just one of the snakes from each breeding. So you switch the pair up. If you still dont get anything visible, then chances are you just bought a bunch of normals. But then maybe only one snake is het and the others are normals. Bit confusing, I know.

Alternatively you could go ahead and buy the 2.2 set and also buy a 100% het male separately (I've seen them from $75-200 this year but usually around $150) and breed that male to the 50% females. Theoretically you could prove them either het or not in 2-3 breedings (or 1 if you're REALLY lucky!). You could maybe pick up a few other poss hets if the seller has any, or any other vendors do, and get a 1(100%).3-4(50%) group, to increase your chances of hitting a pied. It'll be a bit more expensive but in the end save you a lot of worry, time, and breedings.

And on the up side--even if the poss het girls don't turn out to be hets, then you've still got breeding size females you can use for any other project you want!!

If its a risk your willing to take, go for it! good luck! :rockon:

I have a 100% het male, and I was going to breed him to make my own 50% possible hets, but I think I'm going to pick a few 50% possible hets females instead. If they don't prove out, I still will have nice breedable normal females. It's a win/win for me.


Will they sell you just the 50% possible het females?

Basically possible het pied males are near free so I doubt they would sell just the two females any less. Maybe get to $300 so an even $150 each. They could probably sell the two pos het males as normals for $12.50 each to recoup the difference.

I would also recommend buying a 100% het pied male in that situation so as to nail down that half of your risk (assuming from a reliable source).

Another thing to consider with possible het pieds is the sporadic het pied belly indicator marks. They certainly aren't perfect as some normals have them and some hets don't but I still believe they are way more common in hets than the general population. If these girls are the remainders of the clutch after the ones with the belly marker where pulled out they might have less than 50% chance of being hets. But $150 for a good cb isn't that much of a risk for the possible reward. If you where considering buying some cb birls anyway you have to consider how much extra the chance of pied gene is worth to you.

I didnt end up getting them, when I looked at they're paper work on the hets genetics, the parent was a unproven possible het, the other parent a normal. If the parent isnt even proven het, I didnt think it was worth it to even try with the possible possible het babies