My first babies arrived! *Need experienced advice*

[Aryia]

Hi everyone!
*just a heads up, I'm super new in this hobby so forgive some of my ignorance please : 3

My first babies arrived this morning and I'm super excited ^^ I've fallen in love with axantic lines and decided to purchase some VPI axanthic babies to try for some axanthic/something babies in the future.
If you could please take a look at these guys and comment on their potentials, would be greatly appreciated!

VPI Axanthic Female (*She took her first fuzzy shortly after arriving!)


VPI Axanthic Male *didn't want to stress him too much today, will post better pics tomorrow


Pastel 100% Het VPI Axantic Female


Spinner Female


Have a couple more coming in, and want to order a couple more females to start my breeding collection. I know they will take a couple years to grow up and I'm fine with that. I will patiently wait and care for them : ) I will keep this thread updated!

Thanks in advance for any help!
Aryia

Also would like to thank Bob Clark and his workers for these excellent and healthy babies. Even though I understand next to nothing about ball pythons, I can tell that they are quality and most importantly healthy, animals.

[j4mbo]

That's a big commitment for someone who by their own admission doesn't know anything about Ball Pythons!

I'm jealous though, I especially love the Pastel

[KING JAMES]

I guess its the easiest way to find out if breeding snakes is for you, jump in all the way.
If it works out, then good. If not it will just be another collection for sale.

[PitOnTheProwl]

Good looking start.

That looks more like a pinky rat, not a fuzzy, either way its on the small size.

[Aryia]

I have been wanting snakes for a loong time and I have several other breeding projects on-going. So the breeding part isn't new to me, the ball pythons are though! I figure we all have to start somewhere, and yes I'm one of those people that dives head into something. And sorry Fully dedicated to this project, unless one of the babies manages to almost wrangle me to death I won't be letting them go any time soon ^^

I was trying to get a hopper, but my local store only had juvenile mice, juvie rats, or these *almost have fur* fuzzies. Figure it was better than nothing. Good news is all of them ate already (first three on the first day, and the spinner female today).

Have a couple more coming to add to the base collection.

I was curious behind the genetics of breeding. If I am aiming for an axanthic spider for example, and I breed my axanthic male to the spinner female. I would get Spiders, Pinstripes, Normals, and Spinners which are all 100% Het Axanthic? Which means I would have to breed a spider or spinner het axanthic back to an axanthic for a chance of an axanthic spider? The part that confuses me is that the way this works it seems like axanthic and spider are two different genes, which enables the double morph form, whereas something like mojave/lesser/butter act on the same gene and therefore it would be impossible to get a 3-trait mojave/lesser/butter morph? Or do I have this really messed up x.x

[Aryia]

And about inbreeding. How many generations can you inbreed ball pythons until noticeable problems show up?

[KING JAMES]

Just reread my post and realized I came across really negatively, not my intention. My collection grew by 18 in the first two weeks of me owning balls All I meant was that the quickest way to find out if it is for you is to get a bunch. You can have a snake or two and not love it and still get by..start getting into the higher numbers and you gotta love it. Even if you love it at that point it will still test you someday. As far as your inbreeding question how many pinstripe morphs do you see? They came from the same parents, so I would say balls can handle A LOT of inbreeding.

[Aryia]

Just reread my post and realized I came across really negatively, not my intention. My collection grew by 18 in the first two weeks of me owning balls All I meant was that the quickest way to find out if it is for you is to get a bunch. You can have a snake or two and not love it and still get by..start getting into the higher numbers and you gotta love it. Even if you love it at that point it will still test you someday. As far as your inbreeding question how many pinstripe morphs do you see? They came from the same parents, so I would say balls can handle A LOT of inbreeding.

No worries James, didn't take it negatively. I would understand even if it were meant negatively because these are lives that I'm handling. I'm confident about my ability to keep these guys healthy and well though, and I'm going to make a log *don't think the breeding section is where I should do it * about what's going on here so everyone can take a stab at things I'm doing wrong. Ultimately the well-being of my pythons is what's important to me. I do have to admit I have quite a lot coming in in the next week or so ^^

[Aryia]

Brings me to my next question. I can't find a section here that allows us to post a log? Where would be a good place to post something like that?

[kc261]

Looks like a nice start!

This forum doesn't really do "logs". Nothing to stop you from deciding you wanted to and just putting a thread wherever you felt was most appropriate and post updates, though. Or you could become a paying member and get your own sub-forum down at the bottom of the page and keep your log there. But my advice is to start a new thread each time new issues come up. People won't want to wade through a whole log, so you'll get more responses to a shorter thread.

As far as the inbreeding question... well, I'll back up a little and address the genetics. Spider is (probably) a dominant morph. There is some debate about that, but for your purposes you can assume it is dominant. When bred to a normal, you can expect about 50% of the babies to be spiders, and the other 50% to be normals. Axanthic is a recessive morph. An exanthic bred to a normal will produce all normal looking babies, but all of them will be het for axanthic. Yes, they are different genes, but then, butter/lesser and mojave are different genes too. I think what you meant is that butter/lesser and mojave are allelic, while spider and axanthic are not allelic. Also, in case you don't know this, there are different lines of axanthic that are NOT compatible with each other. It is important that you know yours are VPI axanthics, and that crossing them with a different line, say SK axanthics, will not produce axanthic offspring.

OK, inbreeding. It is a common misconception that inbreeding causes genetic mutations. As far as I know (and I've asked a lot of people to show me documentation to the contrary, and so far no one has), the only thing it does is it makes certain genetic mutations more likely to show up in a visible or otherwise identifiable form in the offspring. This includes recessive traits and also the "super" form of codom traits. This is good when the genetic trait is desired (axanthic coloration), and bad when the trait is undesirable (deformities). So, in theory, infinite inbreeding "should" be ok as long as you select against negative traits. In reality, there are so many traits that are so subtle, and I don't mean just a subtle look, but also things that happen internally that we can't really see, that you could have a lot of negative traits and not know it, so it becomes impossible to select against it. Therefore, I (and I think pretty much every one) recommend against excessive inbreeding, and that all inbreeding you do is done carefully to make sure that no negative traits are allowed to continue in your line. There is quite a lot of debate about how much inbreeding is "excessive", however, and you'll kind of have to decide that for yourself. In the BP world, I've seen very few people who have a problem with a single generation of inbreeding such as father/daughter, mother/son, or brother/sister.

As far as your target morph of axanthic spider, you can reach it with the snakes you have with no inbreeding (assuming these 4 are unrelated, which is not really a safe assumption since they all came from the same breeder). Breed the axanthic male to the spinner, and hold back a spider or spinner male who will be het axanthic. Breed that male to the axanthic female or the pastel het axanthic female, and you'll have the possibility of producing axanthic spiders. In addition to avoiding inbreeding, this will also be faster than holding back a female spider or spinner and breeding her back to her axanthic father, because the male will be ready to breed sooner than the female.

The point about pinstripes being an example of a lot of inbreeding makes absolutely no sense, so I suspect King James meant to say something different. Pinstripe is a dominant morph, so in theory they could all have come from a single animal, and been constantly outbred since then with absolutely no inbreeding at all. You'll see much more inbreeding in recessive morphs and codom morphs, because it is often the quickest and easiest and least expensive way to the visual form or the super form.