Hello, I am a new breeder and am just making sure that I have my genetics correct. I am breeding a high def sable male with a subzero het 66% sable. I do not know much and I am wondering if this will make a sunburst.
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First I want to say the enthusiasm about breeding is great, but I’m going to be blunt: I suggest you don’t start breeding until you understand genetics and combinations better. Breeding is not simply putting two animals together, you absolutely need to fully understand combos, heritability, and how to ID animals before you start building a collection and breeding, you’re not there yet. On top of that, Hognoses are absolutely not a beginner breeder species. They’re known to be occasionally cannibalistic when paired, and the hatchlings can be an absolute pain to get started, even with experience.
Onto your question:
Those two absolutely will not create a Sunburst. Sunburst is a combo of two recessive genes, Albino and Sable.
Your male is “high def” Sable, I’m assuming that just means high definition and isn’t a combo. That means your male only carries the Sable gene and cannot produce anything visually Albino, which you need for a Sunburst. At minimum you would need him to be Het Albino to have that chance.
Your female is a Super Arctic Albino 66% possibly Het Sable. This means she carries two copies of the Incomplete Dominant gene Arctic, two copies of the recessive Albino gene, and a chance at carrying the Sable gene.
Were you to pair these two animals, all of the hatchlings would be Arctic Het Sable & Albino. If your female were to prove out as Het Sable, that would give you each hatchling having a 50% chance of either being Arctic Het Sable & Albino or Arctic Sable Het Albino.
I suggest using MorphMarket’s Hognose genetic calculator to help you understand how these genes pass on.
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Seconding everything Noodlehaus has already stated.
It’s great that you have a couple of really nice looking animals. But you can’t just throw them together and assume that they’re fine. Especially with a cannibalistic species. Just a couple of weeks ago someone on instagram posted about how lucky they were to get there just in time to force the female to regurge the male. Thankfully he was still alive.
Knowing how the genetics are passed is very important. Not just for you to know what you’re producing, but to also know you’re not getting a bad deal. % hets are a big gamble sometimes. Heck, I just hatched a 66% het and they actually proved out to be the unlucky 33% of that pairing, which means not carrying the gene at all. I was just glad this was on a ball python where you can test the genetics before needing to go through the trials and growouts.
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Thanks a lot. I was already going to wait a few years so I could study more, and you two just confirmed the necessity.
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Don’t hesitate to ask any further questions, we will help to our best ability! I love that you’re taking the time to build the knowledge base, it’ll really be helpful for you and your animals in the long run. Hognoses are one of those species that seem like they’d be simple, but they’re not. They’re also highly polygenetic, so not every morph has clear cut inheritance/expression. I’ve been keeping hoggies for a few years with plans to breed, and even I’m still not 100% on quite a bit about them. I don’t know if you’ve checked out any of the breeders on YouTube, but I do know some of them do some good informational content. I know Shovel Nose Hogs has some videos on morphs and combos, which could be a good place to start.
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