Can you ID a het visually?

[Ranegyr]

I've heard some people say that you can identify some hets just by looking at them. I know this is not 100% and breeding is the only sure fire way to know. This is just a shot in the dark hoping my boy has something that stands out. His underbelly is what i think some of you call checkerboard which is a good indicator of het, right?

i bought him from an add in the classifieds about 5 years ago. I paid 50 and he came with a 10gal tank. I kept great feeding and shed records back then and i wrote down in his book that he is 50% het. I had no idea what that meant at the time. Any ideas visually, or am i just gonna have to breed him?

these are my first pics in a thread so if they turn out as huge as i think they are going to be, sorry. still learning.

[Ranegyr]

these are my first pics in a thread so if they turn out as huge as i think they are going to be, sorry. still learning."

well that was stupid. they took up 2x my screen before i hit process, now they are tiny. lol.

[Patrick Long]

What was it 50% het for?

[RandyRemington]

Hets for all the co-dominant traits are easy to see. Piebald is considered recessive which means the hets are supposed to look normal but it seems to have some co-dominant tendencies. However, some look for the opposite sort of belly (clear three scales across with the black lined up at the edges) in a possible het pied as an indicator it might be more likely to be a het. Maybe this one was a possible het for some other recessive morph? For sure het males for most recessive morphs are now cheap enough that if you are really interested in breeding for a specific morph you would probably be better off not using this male. And for a recessive mutation you will need the gene from both parents so will need to either buy or produce a female with the mutation and grow it up to breeding size which generally takes longer for females.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

i bought him from an add in the classifieds about 5 years ago. I paid 50 and he came with a 10gal tank.

That alone would lead me to believe that you bought a normal.

If someone had an het or possible het they would have paid the price for it, especially 5 years ago (even for a possible) and would have had the paperwork, and if it was the case I doubt they would have let it go for $50.

But you can always breed him, hold back the females from that pairing and breed them back to him to find out.

It will be a lot of work, you will need some space to keep as many females as you can, and most of all you will need a lot of patience as it can take years to prove out possible hets.

[Ranegyr]

That alone would lead me to believe that you bought a normal.

If someone had an het or possible het they would have paid the price for it, especially 5 years ago (even for a possible) and would have had the paperwork, and if it was the case I doubt they would have let it go for $50.

But you can always breed him, hold back the females from that pairing and breed them back to him to find out.

It will be a lot of work, you will need some space to keep as many females as you can, and most of all you will need a lot of patience as it can take years to prove out possible hets.

the guy i bought him from had him as a pet only and was ghetto broke. i remember being a little scared when i went to the guys house. all i remember and wrote down was he said when he got the snake he was told it was het. at the time i didn't know what that meant. i agree if it had been het it should have sold for a lot more. IMHO i think the guy just wanted to lose the snake. it was in his living room and there wasn't much furniture. and i got the add in the free sales paper. so he either didn't know what he had or he was lied to. he just passed the info to me.

[greghall]

simple you can't its genetic.

[JimmyBalls]

No matter what you ended up with a nice BP for $50 so if anything happens breeding wise with it...that would be just a nice bonus

[RandyRemington]

simple you can't its genetic.

Sorry, I'm not getting this. Pastel is genetic and heterozygous for the pastel mutation ball pythons are easy to id, that is part of what get's their genetic mutation classified as co-dominant.

If you are limiting to genetic mutations considered recessive then yes, you can only id the "recessive" het's visually if they aren't really text book recessive but that actually seems to be the case some times.

[greghall]

Im talking about recessive(albino,pied,ect.),co-dom & doms(pastel,mojo,spider) are different as I understand it co-doms & doms are visaul correct? siblings are normal right?siplings cannot produce dom or co-dom morphs unless bred to a visaul right?they are normals? Im still learning too but thats how I thought it worked.