# Hets



## slither61 (Nov 18, 2006)

Hi all,

Can any one explain in laymans terms het, and double het, mean.

I have never seen in shops, snakes named double het for???.

I have seen het for Albino.

If you bred two double hets for albino orange, would all the offspring be albino orange in colour.
If so would all the offspring be albino orange in colour,and 100% het for albino orange.

If wrong what would I get????.


slither61


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## cornmorphs (Jan 28, 2005)

this is a tough one..
ok, i'll try and explain a bit on corn snake terms, but bearing in mind i have just finished a 12 hour shift i might get some wrong lol..
rather than going into the hardcore details, the easiest way is this..
most corn snakes hold gene for other morphs, morphs that are different to how they look. eg, an amel is an amel (albino) to look at, but it might be het for say lavender... this means that if you were to breed it to another 100% (presuming this one was) then you would get about 25% of the babies that would be lavender babies... to be 100% het a snake would have to have one parent visually the same as the actual snake is het for, i.e the amel that is 100% het for lavender, one of its parents would have been a lavender at least.
breeding 2 100% hets together will bring about 25% visuals (visual lavenders), the other 75% will all be normal... BUT out of that 75%, 2/3 of them will THEMSELVES inturn be het 100% het for lavender... BUT, this is where it gets tricky... as they all look like amels say, you cant tell which of them are het for lavender and which are not until you breed them.. so at this point, if you were to sell them, you would have to sell them at 66% het for lavenders, as only 2/3 of them (66%) are actually... but you dont know for sure which ones are, so you would have to sell them all as only a 66% het chance.

if you have 2 normal looking parents that are both 100% het, then any babies from them that are normal will be 66% het, if only one of the parents was het, then the babies would therefor be only 50% het... i'm not even going to explain that now, thats enough for now lol...
i'm not gonna read that again until this afternoon, its gonna be roughly right without going into mega details.


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## eeji (Feb 22, 2006)

..and if thats confused you, here it is mega simplified...
http://www.iansvivarium.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/corngenetics.html


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## cornmorphs (Jan 28, 2005)

lol, yeh i migh tneed to write that when i am in better condition


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## Ssthisto (Aug 31, 2006)

slither61 said:


> Hi all,
> 
> Can any one explain in laymans terms het, and double het, mean.


Think of the genetics as like being a ladder. Each trait is a step on the ladder, but that step attaches on two sides - these two points are genes. 

If both sides are the same (Like an Albino animal, which is usually "aa" - two copies of the gene "a") then you have a homozygous gene pair for that trait.

If both sides are DIFFERENT (like a "het for albino" animal - which might be expressed as "Aa" - one copy of "not albino A" and one copy of "albino a") then you have a heterozygous gene pair for that trait (and your animal will usually look like the dominant gene of that pair - in this case "not albino" is dominant to "albino").

But that's just one named trait out of hundreds or thousands possible  

In order to be 'double het' you're looking at TWO named steps on the ladder - instead of just "Aa" (het for albino) you're also looking at, say "Ee" (het for anerythristic) - an animal who is Aa Ee is het for two different traits (Albino and Anerythristic) so it's said to be 'double het'. 

From what I understand, in Hognoses, Orange Phase Albino isn't quite a 'double het' thing - the albino makes the snake Aa but the orange part sounds like it's a selectively bred trait (someone took the 'most orange' snakes, bred them together, got more orange ones, bred them together, and so on) ... in which case what I'd expect is that a hognose who is het for albino and is from orange breeding would be more orange than a normal ... and if you bred two of these together, you would get 25% albinos with varying levels of orange - and 75% normals, some of whom would be more or less orange, and some of whom would be invisibly carrying albino.


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