ball python breeding questions

[Daigga]

Hi. I need some help with ball python breeding. I am just getting into this and hope to start breeding within the next couple years. I have a normal male right now. I am looking at getting a female lesser het orange ghost. I want to eventually produce some BEL. I just have a couple questions about odds. The female is a 100% het. If I breed her to the normal will all the babies be 50% hets? If/when I breed I hope to get a normal female and a lesser male. If that happens I want to breed the lesser male back to his mom to hopefully get done all white snakes. Hopefully you guys can help. Thanks

To clarify something here; normal males have zero value in breeding. If you're looking into getting the lesser het OG female, you would be much better off finding a visual orange ghost male and going from there. In this way you'll at least see some visual orange ghosts in your first generation.

You also seem to have some confusion about the percentages. 50% het applies to the clutch as a whole, as in half of the offspring from a het to non het pairing will be hets and half will not (on average). There's no way to tell which is which, so we can the offspring "50% het", as in there's a 50% chance it carries the gene. It sounds a little misleading, as any individual is going to be either het or not, and not some weird percentage despite whatever we may call it.

Another small issue; are you wanting white snakes or visual orange ghosts? Breeding any of the babies back to mom could give you either, but you'll have no way of telling if your white snakes have orange ghost in them or not without growing them up and proving them out.