Proving a Poss Het...

[rascal_rascal_99]

7 eggs is what I use. At that point, there is one chance in a hundred that the snake is a het. Pretty good odds. See Pythonfriend's post (#20) in this thread.

I had a nice 7 egg clutch from a mystic to a normal this year and went 0 for 7 on it...so it's totally possible to strike out still on that many eggs. Crazy odds happen sometimes, that's just how it goes...how far out are the odds of hitting that 400 million dollar lottery right now, but someone is going to do it eventually. I don't know what the number would be for me on proving out a possible het animal, but it would probably be breeding it to a visual until my total number of babies passed 15 and done with a minimum of two clutches/litters.

I've seen 21 eggs from an albino to a pin het albino and not hit on a single albino pin.

I've seen a bumble bee lay 5 eggs and hatch out 5 pastels and not a single one caught the spider gene.

I've seen three eggs from a small pin het hypo bred to a hypo pastel, all three hatched out as hypo pins (one also caught the pastel gene).

Anyone remember how many eggs were there from orange dream x orange dream breedings before the first super was hit on?...I don't remember, but I'm thinking it was a surprisingly high number.

Odds can be crazy sometimes, sometimes they work great for you, other times you've just gotta laugh about how impressively bad they can get to keep yourself from crying.

[MarkS]

Just this year, a couple of clutches. Enchi X Normal. 3 eggs, 3 enchis. Albino X het albino. 7 eggs, 1 albino. Another weird one, Lesser X Normal, 6 eggs. 3 lessers, 3 normals, but ALL of them are female. You just never know what you're going to get and 'the odds' in a single clutch really don't mean much at all.

[T&C Exotics]

the thing about mathematical logic is.... it works.


you start with a 50% possible het, get 4 eggs, all 4 are misses. Now its no longer a 50% possible het, its a 6,25% possible het.


When faced with a 6,25% possible het piebald, would you breed a piebald to it? Would you pay more for a 6,25% possible het than you would for a normal female?

I wouldnt want to produce another clutch with a 93.75% chance for total disappointment and only het hatchlings. I would, already at this early point, breed something like a lemonblast male to it, for a clutch with a high chance of getting good stuff, and raise one of the four 100% het pied hatchlings.

of course you can go up to 7 eggs or 10 eggs. But i would strongly recommend against producing 2 or 3 clutches.... after 2 clutches you will likely be above 10 eggs, and then there is only a 1 in 1000 chance left that its a het after all. A third clutch would really be a waste, you would be better off using some multi-gene codominant male for the third clutch.

There is not much to be gained from turning a 0,1% possible het into a 0,001% possible het, and in 999 out of 1000 cases thats all you will get if you already got 10 misses, but continue anyway.


Yes maybe 4 is too early, i would lose patience, others have more patience. But after 10 eggs its pretty much over.

The thing about all of this is that the Poss het is still Poss het until proven to be het. Just because you miss the odds 10000000000000000 times does not reduce the possibility of it being het at all. It just means you had really bad luck. In the past I have had a pastel male to 5 females and hatched exactly 0 pastels. So based off of what you said he could not be a pastel when in fact he was. It is called a 50% Poss het because it has a 50% chance of being het for what ever and a 50% chance of being normal. The standard come back would be that I gave an example of a co-dom and hets are recessive but the odds are still exactly the same no matter what. Pastel x normal by the math is 50% normals and 50% pastels. A pied x het pied is 50% pied and 50% het pied. That means that there are 2 showing the gene and 2 looking normal just like with the pastel.

[Pythonfriend]

of course if you breed a possible het there will always be a chance that it is indeed a het, no way around this, its a fact.

But after 20 eggs the chance for this possible het is 1:1048576. Less than one in a million. After 40 eggs its less than one in a million squared, less than one in a trillion.


You cannot compare this to, for example, breeding a bee to a normal and getting only pastels. When you look at the bee, you SEE that it has pastel and spider in it, you KNOW it because you SEE it. It is rational to keep on trying because you know for a fact that the desired result is possible.

With a possible het, you see nothing, you lack one piece of information: You do not know if it is a het or if it is not a het. And statistics is the only way to get more knowledge. If you miss, it is not rational to keep on trying beyond a certain point because you DO NOT know if the desired result is possible, the desired result may be impossible because it is not a het.

a 50% possible het ceases to be a 50% possible het when you try to prove it out. The 50% is based purely on statistics, so any more data that you can feed into the statistics will change that value. Either you prove it out and it jumps up to a 100% proven het, or the percentage goes down. After 7 eggs, all misses, when bred to a visual, you NO LONGER HAVE a 50% possible het, you now have a 1% possible het.

A 50% possible het that failed to prove out does not exist. It is no longer a 50% possible het after that, the statistics change and the chance of it being a het go down based on statistics.

The thing about all of this is that the Poss het is still Poss het until proven to be het. Just because you miss the odds 10000000000000000 times does not reduce the possibility of it being het at all. It just means you had really bad luck.

Not true. The possibility gets cut in half with every egg you hatch out that is not a visual. Any attempt, successful or not, will change the possibility. The initial 50% is based on statistics, and absolutely not immune to further statistical data. and only virgin snakes can be 50% or 66% possible hets. Any breeding erases and replaces that value.

[MarkS]

That's absolutely incorrect. The snake is a 50% possible het and will always be a possible het unless it's proven to be 100% het. Adding varying percentages to it are meaningless.

[elduki]

This year I bred fire x normal 6 eggs with six fires 3 males and 3 females

[bcr229]

This year I bred fire x normal 6 eggs with six fires 3 males and 3 females

Wow congrats on those odds!

[Mike41793]

[QUOTE=Pythonfriend;2120566]
With a possible het, you see nothing, you lack one piece of information: You do not know if it is a het or if it is not a het.
/QUOTE]

Cinny 50% ph pied



Would you like to make a bet against her not proving out?

Whether or not pied is recessive is debatable. But according to most it still is, so yes, you can tell with some poss. hets.

[rascal_rascal_99]

I agree that as more eggs hatch out with no visual morph, the chances of proving it out may go down, but that doesn't change it as being labled a 50% poss het to a 1% poss het. I have a feeling we're into the direction now of just discussing semantics and opinion of what to call the animal more than anything else. I do believe that the ethical thing to do (my opinion, what I would do) is if I was selling what was a 50% poss het that I had bred without seeing a visual morph from, would be tell any buyers that it is a 50% poss het that has produced X number of eggs when bred to (visual or het) and has not proved out yet.

I realize that the examples I gave of what I have seen are dealing with visual incomplete dominate genetics so we don't have the "possible" part mixed in, but what it illustrates is that when we start throwing in these percentages, those are just based on theoretical expected possibilities and in real life application often times they do come close I believe if you were able to look at a large sampling size, but things can go a long way off from them also.

As I said before, seven would not be a big enough number for me to count out an animal being a het, somewhere over double that...I've gone 0 for 7 in a clutch, it happens. For anyone else, breed until you feel satisfied and anyone that's trying to prove out a possible het, best of luck to you, it's a great feeling when it happens, it's really an awesome surprise when you prove an animal as being a het that you didn't even buy as a possible het! For anyone that feels they've struck out on proving one out, I hope you have fun and enjoy the ride, hatching out babies is still a lot of fun no matter if they're morphs or normals!

[T&C Exotics]

See with a 50% het it means that from the pairing that made it the possibility of it being het is 50% and it is 50% possibility that it is normal. The possibility that it inherited the gene will not go down. Personally if I produced 3 clutches and had not proven it as a het I would call it a normal and if I ever sold it I would sell it as a normal that was sold to me as a poss het with all documentation from the original purchase. I would not charge more for it I would just sell it as a breeder normal. But odds are that I purchased it because 1 I liked the pattern and color and everything about it and 2 it is a poss het. For me I will not get an animal just for genetics. If it is not the look I want in my collection I will not get it.