Hypomelanistic father bred with Venezuelan Redfoot mother - tah-dah!

Mantissa3

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This is my baby I just adopted from N2Torts at http://www.tortoisecove.com/

Father is hypomelanistic redfoot, mother is Venezuelan redfoot.

I don't really understand the genetics as N2Torts does- I'm just kind of parroting some of the things the breeder taught me about my baby's bloodline, hoping it will sink in over time.

I just wanted the baby as a pet, not for breeding, and he's strong, healthy, feisty and the "best eater" I've ever had. Hats off to good, science-based breeder JD (N2Torts is his name here on the forum)!

I highly recommend contacting him through his website, above, if you are interested in good, strong, well-kept hypos, hets, redfoots, or cherryheads to add to your herd.Mother_Nubs.jpg Father_Peanut.jpg hatchling2.jpg 2-25-2016%20Feb%20HET6a_zpstmizfqkj.jpg
 

Mantissa3

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very nice. @N2TORTS so since it's a hypo dad and normal mother would that even be considered a het?

We will wait for JD to ring in, but in the meantime, I want to say my understanding so he can check me when he sees this, ok?

I've been looking online and reading to see if I can better wrap my mind around what JD taught me about my baby... I've adapted this from a herp website I found on this topic.

Hypo is just short for hypomelanistic or reduced melanin. They don't lack it completely, they just have less of it, resulting in an animal that's lighter than normal but still not as bright as an albino. Albino's have red or white iris colours, hypos have regular eyes - in the case of redfoot tortoises, brown or black/gray iris colours.

Het is short for heterozygous which means the animal is a carrier for that gene.

So if I breed a normal animal to a hypo animal, all the babies will look pretty normal, but carry the hidden gene for hypo in them.

They'll be het for hypo, or hypomelanistic hets, and these are more valuable in some keeper-breeder circuits than normals because even though they may not look like anything special you can still use them to produce more hypo's by breeding them to another het or a visual hypo.

If you breed a het to a normal redfoot, you get normal redfoots as far as I can tell.
 

naturalman91

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We will wait for JD to ring in, but in the meantime, I want to say my understanding so he can check me when he sees this, ok?

I've been looking online and reading to see if I can better wrap my mind around what JD taught me about my baby... I've adapted this from a herp website I found on this topic.

Hypo is just short for hypomelanistic or reduced melanin. They don't lack it completely, they just have less of it, resulting in an animal that's lighter than normal but still not as bright as an albino. Albino's have red or white iris colours, hypos have regular eyes - in the case of redfoot tortoises, brown or black/gray iris colours.

Het is short for heterozygous which means the animal is a carrier for that gene.

So if I breed a normal animal to a hypo animal, all the babies will look pretty normal, but carry the hidden gene for hypo in them.

They'll be het for hypo, or hypomelanistic hets, and these are more valuable in some keeper-breeder circuits than normals because even though they may not look like anything special you can still use them to produce more hypo's by breeding them to another het or a visual hypo.

If you breed a het to a normal redfoot, you get normal redfoots as far as I can tell.

yeah but regardless of weather or not you get a normal redfoot it would still very slimly carry the hypo gene to my understanding if you were to take that tort and breed it back to a hypo you have a very very very slim chance of having visual hypo babies but if you were to take those babies and breed it to hypo again it would be back into the visual hypo chances i believe
 

Mantissa3

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yeah but regardless of weather or not you get a normal redfoot it would still very slimly carry the hypo gene to my understanding if you were to take that tort and breed it back to a hypo you have a very very very slim chance of having visual hypo babies but if you were to take those babies and breed it to hypo again it would be back into the visual hypo chances i believe


Here's what a hypo snake breeder told me earlier tonight- he says these types of het breeding formulae are really simple since it only involves one recessive and one dominant gene split per individual...

"Het x het can produce visuals but it is not guaranteed each egg has a 25% chance to be visual hypo.

Now if you put a visual x het each egg had a 50% chance of being a visual and,

obviously visual x visual all Babies will be visual"

Having quoted this long-time herp expert and breeder above, I have absolutely no way whatever of validating what he says because before I adopted my het baby from JD, I had only the vaguest notion of even how many eggs a redfoot lays in one clutch. LOL

What do you think of the quoted herp guru, David?
 

naturalman91

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that sounds about right except the i don't believe visual+visual=visual automatically i mean yes it has the highest chance i'd believe but doesn't automatically guarantee visuals
 

mark109r

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here's another way to think of it
- take a coin and paint both sides black, this is your normal red foot with two normal recessive genes (blk in this example)
- take another coin and paint one side black, your normal gene, and one side white, your hypo gene. This is your het. one normal,dominant gene (black side of coin), and one hypo recessive gene (white side of coin). Het red foots will all look like a normal red foot, the dominant normal gene masks the recessive hypo gene.
- take another coin and paint both side white. this is your visual hypo. two recessive hypo genes.

now you have your three possible types of gene combinations, your three coins.
each tortoise parent can only randomly give one of it's two genes to it's offspring, in this example it's one coin flip.
-So two normals (black/black) can only give normal genes, no mater how many times you flip your coin, it will be black, so all offspring will receive a normal gene from each parent and will be normal.

-if you breed a normal blk/blk to a het blk/wh you get two different combos. Again the normal parent only has normal genes to pass on to the offspring. the het parent has a 50/50 chance to pass on either it's hypo gene or it's normal gene. so flip your coin, if you get blk you are adding another normal gene which will give you a normal red foot. if you flip and get wh, you add a hypo gene and end up with a het red foot. Half the offspring should be normal and half hets. All the offspring will be normal looking, so you won't be able to distinguish the hets from the normals.

-if you breed a normal blk/blk to a hypo wh/wh you will get 100% hets blk/wh All offspring look normal but carry the hypo gene.

-if you breed hypo wh/wh to a hypo wh/wh, 100% of the offspring will be hypo wh/wh. so yes two visual hypos bread together can only produce visual hypos.

- if you breed a het blk/wh to another het blk/wh, you get three combs. flip your blk and wh coin once for each parent and 50% the time you will get one blk and one wh gene, het offspring. 25% of the flips will end up blk/blk, your normal offspring, 25% will be wh/wh hypo offspring. And again both the hets and the normals in this cross will be visually normal
hope this helps out
 

Levi the Leopard

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here's another way to think of it
- take a coin and paint both sides black, this is your normal red foot with two normal recessive genes (blk in this example)
- take another coin and paint one side black, your normal gene, and one side white, your hypo gene. This is your het. one normal,dominant gene (black side of coin), and one hypo recessive gene (white side of coin). Het red foots will all look like a normal red foot, the dominant normal gene masks the recessive hypo gene.
- take another coin and paint both side white. this is your visual hypo. two recessive hypo genes.

now you have your three possible types of gene combinations, your three coins.
each tortoise parent can only randomly give one of it's two genes to it's offspring, in this example it's one coin flip.
-So two normals (black/black) can only give normal genes, no mater how many times you flip your coin, it will be black, so all offspring will receive a normal gene from each parent and will be normal.

-if you breed a normal blk/blk to a het blk/wh you get two different combos. Again the normal parent only has normal genes to pass on to the offspring. the het parent has a 50/50 chance to pass on either it's hypo gene or it's normal gene. so flip your coin, if you get blk you are adding another normal gene which will give you a normal red foot. if you flip and get wh, you add a hypo gene and end up with a het red foot. Half the offspring should be normal and half hets. All the offspring will be normal looking, so you won't be able to distinguish the hets from the normals.

-if you breed a normal blk/blk to a hypo wh/wh you will get 100% hets blk/wh All offspring look normal but carry the hypo gene.

-if you breed hypo wh/wh to a hypo wh/wh, 100% of the offspring will be hypo wh/wh. so yes two visual hypos bread together can only produce visual hypos.

- if you breed a het blk/wh to another het blk/wh, you get three combs. flip your blk and wh coin once for each parent and 50% the time you will get one blk and one wh gene, het offspring. 25% of the flips will end up blk/blk, your normal offspring, 25% will be wh/wh hypo offspring. And again both the hets and the normals in this cross will be visually normal
hope this helps out
Wow...this coin analogy really helped it click in my mind... Thanks!
 

portsmouthtortoises

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I'm going to throw a spanner in the works...

I have a hypo redfoot. The father of this hypo is albino (with red eyes) and the mother is hypo (with normal eyes.) It has some albino siblings (with red eyes) and some hypo siblings (with normal eyes.)
I also have an albino and some het albinos with both parents being het for albino.

What happens if/when the hypo is put with:

A) Normal redfoot (no recessive albino or hypo gene)
B) Albino
C) Het albino

Can anyone explain the genetics?
 
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