Quote Originally Posted by FranklinMorphs View Post
Nice to see another match nerd, but I just want to point out, this equation is only getting you to 99% certainty. While that's pretty good. Nature just doesn't always follow math. IMHO, HetxHet is three clutches of at least 6 viable eggs(only one more egg than purported above by maths). HetxHom is one clutch of at least 6 viable eggs where the snake in question is known absolutely to be a parent. In the case of males, it must be obvious that there was no retained sperm preventing the male in question from seeing the female. In the case of a female, if she's a virgin, first clutch should be good, if she's not, again, it needs to be obvious that she did not retain sperm from the previous year, regardless of who bred her.

This brings up another question in my mind. I've seen several times lately of people underselling their snakes. Not enough blushing on a possible firefly, call it a pastel and sell yourself short. Hopefully the person getting it is happy with that. I know I would be. But what do you do in this case. Refund, take the snake back and re-sell for more? I'm perfectly happy with the sale being final if I undersell myself, but it could be an interesting conundrum, especailly if someone is working on something like a vanilla cream or vanilla scream project. Or You have BELs with extra genes.
It is true that math and nature do not always match up. However, the OP wanted to know how many clutches/eggs it takes to disprove a het. The actual answer is that a breeding test cannot produce 100% certainty that a possible het is not a het. That leads to the question, "How many clutches/eggs are required to get to an acceptable level of probability?" 99% probability is generally considered an acceptable place to stop a breeding test. More eggs simply adds places to the right of the decimal point without ever getting to 100%.

IMO, more people undersell their snakes than is likely to be believed. I once bred a pied ringneck dove from two non-pieds. On one side of the pedigree I had to go back five generations to find a pied ancestor. I just goes to show that a recessive gene can pass down several generations without the human owner knowing it. Even dominant and codominant genes can do this. [A condition (most commonly inherited in an autosomal dominant manner) is said to have complete penetrance if clinical symptoms are present in all individuals who have the disease-causing mutation, and to have reduced or incomplete penetrance if clinical symptoms are not always present in individuals who have the disease-causing mutation. http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/glossary=penetrance] It is all part of the fog surrounding breeding.