Something else you have to remember is that without dna test and the information needed to qualify those test you can only presume the dna % on the first generation of hybrids. The first generation is always 50/50 after that it’s a toss up because you have no way of knowing which Gene’s each parent passed down. Think of it like this… let’s say a snake is made up of 100 tokens tokens is your percentage aka genetic traits. Let’s say I want to make a hybrid between a blue snake and a yellow snake. So I cross those two and that offspring gets half its tokens from the blue parent and half its tokens from the yellow parent. That’s how it works the parents each contribute equally and each parent only has blue or yellow tokens to give. So this first generation is 50/50 and it’s now a green snake. So let’s say I take 2 of those green snakes and breed them together for F2’s or second generation hybrids. Even though each parent contributes half of the genetics this time they each have blue and yellow tokens to give. They can give any combination of those tokens that they have. If these tokens were always passed down equally the new f2 hybrids would all be 50/50 therefore green snakes, but the tokens do not necessarily pass from parent to offspring that way. Each green snake now has 50 blue tokens and 50 yellow tokens and is going to contribute half of the tokens to a new baby. They may contribute 25 blue and 25 yellow each, or one may contribute 40 blue and 10 yellow while the other parent contributes 15 blue and 35 yellow. Now your F2’s instead of being 50/50 blue and yellow have 55 blue tokens and 45 yellows making them just a little more blue than yellow. And since we’re talking about entire clutches of eggs you might have some that are 50/50 and some that are 60/40 and some that are 90/10 or 10/90. Past the first generation of hybrids it’s a crapshoot as to what dna mix your going to get. So when you see something listed as 25% ball and 75% blood it’s really just an ideal number but not necessarily or even likely to be the real number.
I am so happy to see someone else that actually understands this!!
I have been trying to make this same concept known when it comes to things like dwarf and super dwarf animals and most people just refuse to listen to me!!
@t_h_wyman this is why it’s important to have some information on the parents. Especially if you’re getting a super dwarf because you want something small. Even with hybrids, if the parents are showing more of the SD size traits then chances are that they got more of those Gene’s from their own parents. That means they have less of the giant Gene’s to be able to pass down to the next generation. That’s no gaurantee they’ll stay as small as the parents of course but it’s generally a good indicator as it takes a few generations to go back the other way in any significant way.
@t_h_wyman I had to adjust the explanation to make it a little more clear. Posted that at 4 am so was a little tired.
