how far can it go?

[akaangela]

How many co dom and recessive traits can you have in one animal? For example can you have a albino ghost spinner? So that would be albino x ghost x spider x pin. The thing is the albino and the ghost are recessive, so to get it you would have to go out like 6 generations to get it (did I figure that out right?)

In the future I hope to produce albino spinners. I was just wondering how far out have we gone yet? It seems like yesterday a bumblebee was HUGE, now it not common but not unatainable. The albino used to be $1200 or more but now they are down to 350 or so. Is there any morph that you think will retain it's value?

I am just curious because now it is affordable for someone like me to be able to play with genetics. I CAN now afford to make a bumblebee, or a Bell. It is exciting.

[jjsnakedude]

it depends on what you start with. You could buy a spinner and a Albino Ghost and have a Spinner albino ghost in like 3 or less years.

[akaangela]

I guess my question is starting from... the bottom. like albino, ghost, spider etc how many traits can one animal have? It seems to me that we have gone a long way and wondering if there is a limit on what one animal can hold.

[steveboos]

I personally think the combinations are endless and you can just mix everything untill you have some outrageous combinations. Unfortunately in doing so a lot of inbreeding will happen and some genetics might be messed up like Caramel Albino and other morphs.

[bad-one]

Genetics wise I don't think there is a limit.

The morphs we breed for are just mutations in the existing genes. (I'm pretty sure that's right)

[unspecified42]

it depends on what you start with. You could buy a spinner and a Albino Ghost and have a Spinner albino ghost in like 3 or less years.

So let's see...( someone correct me if I'm wrong here). First you drop thousands on those two snakes. Then you start breeding.

You'd have a 25% chance per egg of getting a spinner het for ghost and albino on the first breeding. We won't even take into consideration the probability of gender, let's just assume that works out in your favor. Then breeding the spinner het back to the albino ghost, you'd have a 6.25% of getting an albino ghost spinner.

If you can do that in 3 years or less, please send some lotto numbers my way, too!


The answer to your question, as far as I know, is that no one really knows. When you start working with multiple alleles and recessive traits the probabilities get so low that it takes a long long time to hit some of these combinations, like you said. There's a lot we do understand about genetics, but even more that we don't. I've never heard a good reason to believe that a snake can only 'hold' so many morph genes, but only time and breeding will tell!

[Brandon Osborne]

I personally think the combinations are endless and you can just mix everything untill you have some outrageous combinations. Unfortunately in doing so a lot of inbreeding will happen and some genetics might be messed up like Caramel Albino and other morphs.

I don't think inbreeding is the cause of messed up Caramels. I think it's just part of that morphs genetic makeup.....kind of like spiders wobbling and super cinny/black pastels having the duckbill.

[dr del]

Hi,

I think Kara highlighted one of the possible problems in this thread.

Once you get to multiple gene combos nobody has made before you can get unexpected results and trying to work out what exact genetic combo it contains gets more and more difficult with each added gene.

Can you imagine the effort needed to determine one way or another if the animal has 6 recessive genes or only 5?


dr del

[Freakie_frog]

The types and number of combos are pretty muche endless. But you will get to a point were the animal is not longer visually appealing and as such not worth producing for sale but still a power house breeder. I mean a supper lesser, super pastel, super enchi might be an all white snake but the breeding potentional is through the roof .

[Tim Mead]

Its mind blowing, awesome, like playing GOD and creating new life forms or art in scales..Whats cool is that many a normal floating around today may just not be a normal but hold the genetics for something special..
Crazy cool and even the little guy can hit the jackpot..