Strange butter x normal clutch

[bunnykit]

I think your girl is het. Pied as well she has good tracks and 3 and 4 are butter het. Pied.

It doesn't have to be though, nuclear spider (butter-fire-spider) have that exact flame on the tail too. The belly pic was of the normal, and I do agree though that it does look het pied, so it's not impossible, but butter does flame out if combined with some other morphs. If there is another morph going on, I saw someone say black back or something like that, then it might flame out. Would be good to breed a male back to mom though, it would settle it.

[MarkS]

The orange on that first baby is amazing, and I agree with the possible het pied markers as well. I would definatly be holding back the males to breed back to the mother.

[satomi325]

I immediately thought het pied as well.

[Mike41793]

Mom is a het pied

[angllady2]

Well they are lovely babies.

Despite the persistent myth of the "het pied train tracks" I would not hold my breath mom is a het pied or that any of the babies are. Little ringers like that show up a lot more often than people think, the last reptile show I went to here in St. Louis, the newest crop of '13 babies there were lots of ringers on normals and morphs of all kinds. I was really surprised by the number, and from different breeders as well. One of my close friends thinks it might be because more and more people are seeking snakes with ringers and then breeding them is a possible reason why we see more now.

If you already had plans to keep one baby, by all means if one ringer is a boy, keep him and perhaps try him back to mom eventually. But I sure wouldn't get my hopes up for butter pieds.

I have two het pied females and a het pied male myself. Of the three, only one of the girls has the "train tracks" and they are small, less than 3" long. Of the six 100% het pieds I produced in 2012, from breeding a visual pied male to my het females, only two babies out of six had the markers. One had a spot about an inch and a half long by her tail, the other had two spots, each about 2" long. The het pied "markers" are just not that reliable.

I do know that some breeders, when looking at buying a ball python that is labeled "possible het" pied, they will examine the clutchmates and choose one that has the markers because they feel it gives them a better chance of getting the possible het. But in my personal experience you just can't say "This one has the het pied markers, so it is absolutely a het pied." At best you can say, " There is a chance these babies are het pied, so one that has the markers would be the one I choose as most likely to be that possible het."

Gale

[Mike41793]

Train tracks aren't the only het pied markers, just a piece of the puzzle.

[darkranger69]

I think there is no ringer here but just how the het. Pied mess up the lesser/butter patterns. Just my opinion. I will say keep a male with mess up pattern and put her on mum next year as well

[Matt K]

I think there is no ringer here but just how the het. Pied mess up the lesser/butter patterns. Just my opinion. I will say keep a male with mess up pattern and put her on mum next year as well

Ehhhhhh--looks like two pretty classic ringers to me.

Cheers,
-Matt