Hi,

Quote Originally Posted by snakesRkewl View Post
I've been told by numerous people that cocktailing snakes produces more normals(by odds) than a single male X female breeding, but I'd be curious to the facts myself...
I sat and worked this out once because, I too, kept hearing it.

Mathematically it has no basis in fact - there are exactly the same number of normal genes in the equation if you use heterozygous co-doms for example.

If an egg were capable of having more than two parents then it might be a factor but they can't.

What it does do statistically is divide the groups containing the genes from the side with multiple animals into the various possible but mutually exclusive outcomes.

So if you bred a male mojave and pastel to a normal female then each egg still has a 50% chance of being a normal statistically but the odds of it being a mojave are 25% and the chance of it being a pastel are 25%. All things being equal and assuming each male has a 50% chance of being the father.

So the odds of getting a morph or a normal remain unchanged from breeding using only one co-dom male.

In practice I doubt all males have the same chance owing to breeding timing before ovulation, sperm quality or a myriad of other factors. But there is no logical reason any of this would produce more chance of hatching a normal instead of a morph.


dr del