So ive come into a discussion where somebody is adamantly against me for keeping track of hets below 50% for my own projects claiming 50% is the lowest it goes. So my question for other breeders is does anybody else look through lineage charts of potential purchases to see if there may be any hidden hets?
The topic of this was my hypo coastal girl, both her grand parents on one of the parents side were het, making one of her parents 66% het. This het was never proven one way or the other, so i treat it as a 66%, and as such my girl would be 33% het ( half the genes get passed on, so half of 66% is 33% chance of her having the het from her grand parents).
Im pretty sure that statistically this is how it would work until the parents het is proven or not, its just not worth keeping track of when you are marketing an animal for sale, so you dont really see it in sales talk. Am i crazy here? Does anybody else keep track of hets to this extent?
To clarify, in her case its het axanthic im hoping for, and her eyes still being silver at 2 years old gives me some hope haha, even if the odds are low.
In this case there isn’t really a right or wrong depending on how you look at it. I think breeders should keep track since there is still a chance of it popping up (a lot of us have heard stories of reptiles, typically corn snakes, producing animals that have a recessive gene that was an unknown het in both of the parents). Mathematically/statistically you’re right that she has a 33% chance of being het. It seems that in the reptile hobby this isn’t quite true, I’m personally not sure why. It shouldn’t be labeled as pos het as an advantage if selling but the buyer should know that it has a chance of being het. There’s a good discussion on it here:
I keep track and when I sell animals I make sure and list any potential genes. I personally would be furious to find out an animal I purchased with the intention of breeding had a genetic trait possibly lurking in the genes I was unaware of. I don’t care if it’s half a dozen generations back, if the possibility is there I want to know.
Ill have to give that thread a read! Would be cool to see all the opinions and information people brought up! I definitely agree its not exactly a good marketing strategy haha, but when trying to keep lines clean, some people want to know of any possibilities, and for the person trying for firsts, sometimes it can be a good shortcut if you are willing to take risks (in this case, to my knowledge there isnt hypo axanthic yet, so if it proves out i can produce hypo axanthic when she breeds, and if it doesnt work out, at least ill get half hypos for the clutch.) Its just interesting that some will deny it even being a thing even if mathematically it is correct and for recessive genes, youd have no way to prove it without breeding. I feel it doesnt hurt to keep track of
Thats one reason i like doing it. Some people like to keep their lines clean and not have mystery morphs popping up, for snakes like ball pythons with 70 million genes it can become very difficult to keep track of, but for carpet pythons, where theres only a couple morphs per locality, its much easier to keep track of, especially since most are recessive with only a couple inc doms
This is the easiest way to write it out. I edited the drawing to do things fully out. I could do the squares for each gen to show how the percentages come up, but im pretty sure most of us are familiar enough that its not needed, but if theres any confusion i can redo the drawing to include squares for % calculation
I am looking to breed Crested Geckos this year and I have plans, however the genetics weren’t usually logged (many years ago) so it’s made genetics a little bit of pot luck. Most Cresties now have lineage, but it’s taken a while and there are still kinder surprises.
My point is…I feel that if people don’t pass on information about possible projects, then it may end up like that with a lot of reptiles. I feel that the price shouldn’t be affected by possible genes though, if your after more money then wait to prove it out.
I dont think it has to be on the advertisement (although may save time with questions) however I think it should be passed on to a potential buyer.
That’s just my opinion, I don’t think there is really a right or wrong answer.
Fair, my arguement isnt one of marketing at all, it was more of looking at a lineage chart for an animal im getting, or have, and determining what the odds of it being het would be based on the pairing info. It seems to be a hot topic, but it seems simple when you treat it as a probability function. Im absolutely NOT saying that i should be able to charge 200$ more for an animal that may be het for something, just because there is a chance of the het. What people charge is on them, but i wouldnt stake my seller reputation on selling lottery animals. But i would state in the description if there is the chance, as some people may not want to muddle their gene pool and chance it. Some people may hope it pans out and decide to buy it on that chance. But if i sell it priced as a normal, and it ends up being normal, i dont believe anyone could rightly complain. If i sell it higher, and it ends up being normal, theres bound to be drama haha.
I keep track for my own stock, I don’t list anything below 50% tho. If someone already commits to buying an animal I let them know afterwards tho. Just always seemed to be the best perceived way to go about it.
But yes, I have a few 33% and 25% het holdbacks lol
I like keeping track of that stuff myself! I don’t list any babies as anything below 50% het, but I do at least put the pos het(s) of the parents in the ad description just for the buyer’s information, and I like it when other breeders tell me about any pos hets so I can keep track of it in my own records. Is it likely that they will prove out? Probably not, but taking that chance can be fun lol. I definitely wouldn’t buy a 33% het if I was really trying to get into a certain project (unless there are some strong markers, and even then it would be a risk), but if it is just a secondary thing that would be nice to have if it proved out but isn’t a big deal if it doesn’t then I would probably go for it.
Thats the situation im in with mine, i bought the animal as a hypo coastal, it wasnt listed as het anything, but when i was looking over its lineage charts, 1 of the parents was 66% het for axanthic, I asked the breeder if they had ever tried to prove out the 66% get, and they said they had not, and didnt wven think of the possibility when they sold me the snake. I had already paid for and received the snake by this point, so they had no reason to lie about whether the parent was proven out or not. Was talking about my breeding plans and that i was hoping the 33% het proved out and caught flack for it, up til yesterday i didnt even know there was a debate about it haha. My girl at 2 yrs still has silver eyes which can be a marker for het axanthic, so fingers crossed the possible het was an afterthought / added bonus
Fair, im sure the more recessives you stack the harder it is to add the next. You could do it wasy with line breeding, but depending on how many genes you are pushing for, that could take decades as it takes about 3 years per generation!
I am trying to avoid line breeding more then F3 as lower birth rates is something I want to avoid even if it is only a 5% loss. I plan to have at least 4 possibly 5 recessives.
That can be mitigated if you find breeders following the close yo your breeding plan so you can trade hatxhlings for diversity, however what i meant is 1 recess breed to 1 recess, you get 2 hets, breed the double hets together to get 2 recess. Breed the 2 recess to a 1 recess ( or higher if you can afford) end up with triple hets and new blood in the line, rinse and repeat. The Fgen doesnt ever get too high as you are frequently adding in fresh blood as you add recessives it just takes forever haha
I get you, it can be done as i described it just takes alot of time and generations. The more genes you start with the quicker it will go, but you could technically add 1 gene at a time until you have the exact combo you want, and as long as you are adding in fresh snakes as youbl add the genes, you keep from having too inbred of a end result
