Inbreeding question

So, is inbreeding a problem?

Maybe I'm wrong in my assumption, but as I have researched (the little bit that I have) ...if I bred a het X to a normal, and then breed the offspring back to the het, is that a problem? Or do the offspring then need to be bred into a different "family"?

And, please explain the 1.0 normal, 0.1 etc... stuff. Haven't found that here, yet.

BTW, I have my friend's normal female BP (named her Gertrude, call her perdy gerdy cause she's so pretty). She's only 28" long, but is about 6 years old. His other friend had her and fed her very little...a medium rat every other month. My friend can't have it at his house because his wife has nightmares about it--basically can't handle it.

Anyway, I got it to my house last week. BPs are SOOOOO beautiful! I love that she'll just hang out with us. So docile, nice.

First lets do the 1.0 0.1 thing: 1.0 means it's 1 male. 0.1 means it's 1 female. Now if you had 3.4 that means 3 males, 4 females of that morph.

Second, on inbreeding...It's a debatable subject. I personally don't like it unless you're trying to prove out a morph, then line breeding is the easiest way, and fastest way.
However, I find staying too much in the same lines is bad, I find spiders that breed with spiders have a higher chance or getting bad spins. Again, debatable. Some people like the keep inbreeding to get better looking animals. I prefer to try and strengthen the lines.

Third, welcome to the forums, and beware....once you have one ball python....you'll want more!;)

Ok one part has been explained but there was one part of it left out that would be the 0.0.1 which would be unsexed.

To the inbreeding. I have 2 different points of view on this. First if it is say mother to son or father to daughter then I am more ok with it but if it is sib to sib, brother to sister, then it is less ok. But I do see the point of doing it. As with myswelf I have 1.1 het pieds that are siblings that when they are mature I am going to breed together to make a pied but after that I will be out crossing to make a stronger line for myself. I will be doing the same with my Het. Red when I breed her in a few years to my pastel. Her son will be bred back to her, if I get a pastel het. red male, to attempt to get pastel red axanthics. But again I will be out crossing after that.

As with anything there is always 2 sides to the coin. There is the chance that there will be negative effects on the offspring but that is not overly common from my experience.

Now to address something else you said. If you were to breed a het, lets use albino for this, so you have a het albino male and a normal female. They will both look normal, Het just means that it carries the gene for albino but does not show it. So you have this het albino male and a normal female and you breed them together. You get eggs lets say you get 6 eggs. According to the math you should get 3 normals and 3 het albinos but there is no way to tell them apart because theu all look normal. Also you could get all normals and all het albinos. But on average you should get a 50/50 split so you would then ahve what is called 50% possible het albinos. Now lets go a little further and lets say you get 3 females... So you would hold them back, grow them up, and breed them to daddy... Of those 3 females lets say one was an actual het albino. Out of the eggs produced by that one female you would have a 25% change of getting an albino. So lets say you get 4 eggs just for easy math. So you get one albino that leaves 3 normal looking babies. Of those babies 2 out of the 3 should be het for albino so they would be called 66% het albino because as you can see 2 out of 3 is 2/3 which is 66%...... But again they will look normal so no way to tell for sure which ones are het for albino.... Now that I have hurt your brain more than you ever wanted I will drop this because I do not want to get into the more complex areas of breeding.... But if you want to go to ralphdavisreptiles.com and go to the matrix area and read all about the breeding and possible results and all of that there he lays it out extremely well. I hope I didn't scare you off.

Lastly welcome to the forum and to Ball Pythons they are a great addiction.

Ball pythons have inbred to stay alive in localities in africa for millions of years and would not be affected (like other animals) by breeding with their sister, aunt, etc. This is the only way some anomallies are proven.

Sibling to sibling is absolutely not good. Especially if the siblings were from father to daughter or mother to son.
That is how and why people get so many birth defects with there snakes. It takes 2 genes to combine to make a cause a birth defect just like it takes two to make a recessive color mutation. (not counting codom and dom which still get a gene from each parent)

Back breeding is done in all animal breeding's as a short cut to breed for certain qualities. Instead of waiting for the right match its more cost effective and faster to just back breed and it is for the most part widely accepted. I don't much care for it but I am more open to it.

Inbreeding by way of sibling to sibling is were it gets really bad because now the chances are two fold that a bad gene is in each of them. This is more time than not what causes stuff like no eyes one eye as well as other deformities. In my opinion its probably why some of the supers have odd shaped or "duck-billed" heads. Now I am sure some one might say I am full of it but just face it. A lot of breeders don't really care about the consequences of inbreeding. If they can get a 20k-40k snake in 2 years and before some one else they will.

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Originally Posted by Vilenica

Ball pythons have inbred to stay alive in localities in africa for millions of years and would not be affected (like other animals) by breeding with their sister, aunt, etc. This is the only way some anomallies are proven.

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Ball pythons are immune to inbreeding? This is not the only way "anomalies" are proven. Every thing is affected by inbreeding. To say that Balls are not is ludicrous!

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Originally Posted by TessadasExotics

Inbreeding by way of sibling to sibling is were it gets really bad because now the chances are two fold that a bad gene is in each of them. This is more time than not what causes stuff like no eyes one eye as well as other deformities. In my opinion its probably why some of the supers have odd shaped or "duck-billed" heads. Now I am sure some one might say I am full of it but just face it. A lot of breeders don't really care about the consequences of inbreeding. If they can get a 20k-40k snake in 2 years and before some one else they will.

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I am no expert here but I do not believe any of those deformataions have been proven genetic...

Also, in the case of spiders head wobbles and the duck bill in super black pastels and super cinnies, it is a deformation that comes with the morph... What ever gives them their pattern also gives them the deformation... Spider sibs and sibs from the super cinnies and black pastels do not display these deformations...

You are a bit off track with your examples...

Most reptile species can handle many generations of inbreeding with no issues at all...

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Originally Posted by TessadasExotics

Sibling to sibling is absolutely not good. Especially if the siblings were from father to daughter or mother to son.
That is how and why people get so many birth defects with there snakes. It takes 2 genes to combine to make a cause a birth defect just like it takes two to make a recessive color mutation. (not counting codom and dom which still get a gene from each parent)

Back breeding is done in all animal breeding's as a short cut to breed for certain qualities. Instead of waiting for the right match its more cost effective and faster to just back breed and it is for the most part widely accepted. I don't much care for it but I am more open to it.

Inbreeding by way of sibling to sibling is were it gets really bad because now the chances are two fold that a bad gene is in each of them. This is more time than not what causes stuff like no eyes one eye as well as other deformities. In my opinion its probably why some of the supers have odd shaped or "duck-billed" heads. Now I am sure some one might say I am full of it but just face it. A lot of breeders don't really care about the consequences of inbreeding. If they can get a 20k-40k snake in 2 years and before some one else they will.

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Actually, reptiles are much simpler than mammals genetically. Cornsnakes have been inbred and linebred for what, 11 generations with no defects? Do i advocate 11 generation line breeding? Ask me when i have 11 generations of my own snakes :/

Inbreeding and line breeding is pretty acceptable. Line/Inbreeding increases the likelihood of similar characteristics being passed along. This means good with bad and neutral.

Have you ever heard of the genetic bottle neck? That is one way how localities and even new species are formed.

Not to play devils advocate here..but the only reason humans perceive inbreeding (regarding any species) as a bad thing is because in a lot countries its culturally unacceptable.

Back to the topic at hand: a lot of breeders chose to line breed rather than outright inbreed animals. You get to enhance traits that you want that way, while still using animals that aren't exactly and directly related to each other with both parents.

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Originally Posted by TessadasExotics

Sibling to sibling is absolutely not good. Especially if the siblings were from father to daughter or mother to son.
That is how and why people get so many birth defects with there snakes. It takes 2 genes to combine to make a cause a birth defect just like it takes two to make a recessive color mutation. (not counting codom and dom which still get a gene from each parent)

Back breeding is done in all animal breeding's as a short cut to breed for certain qualities. Instead of waiting for the right match its more cost effective and faster to just back breed and it is for the most part widely accepted. I don't much care for it but I am more open to it.

Inbreeding by way of sibling to sibling is were it gets really bad because now the chances are two fold that a bad gene is in each of them. This is more time than not what causes stuff like no eyes one eye as well as other deformities. In my opinion its probably why some of the supers have odd shaped or "duck-billed" heads. Now I am sure some one might say I am full of it but just face it. A lot of breeders don't really care about the consequences of inbreeding. If they can get a 20k-40k snake in 2 years and before some one else they will.

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"Duck-billed heads" and "spider wobbles" are not caused IN ANY WAY by inbreeding or line breeding. These are traits that are directly linked to the color/pattern mutation we breed for. ALL spiders have a wobble to some degree, yet, their normal siblings do not.

Also line breeding is acceptable as long as you do not continue to do it for many many generations. A few generations is fine and you should have little chance of getting any defects (kinks, no eyes) from those breedings. There was a breeder who bred albinos and kept breeding related animals over and over. After many generations he began seeing deformities but that was only after several generations. Reptile genetics are far less complex than mammals, so so yes, to a degree they are more "immune" to inbreeding. They can handle far more generations of it than other mammals. Though, even some mammals tolerate inbreeding as well, mice being one of them.

OK and for anyone who wants to believe that Balls or any other reptile is different than any other animal, then by all means go ahead. The gene pool for ball python morphs is pretty shallow due to heavy line breeding and inbreeding. I don’t really care to get into a heated debate about things that no one Knows for sure but that they "know for sure".

Not all super cinnies or black pastels are duck-billed. Some normal balls have been seen with wobble.

Inbreeding and too heavy of line breeding does affect corns. I doubt that the scale-less corn is a natural phenomena.

Inbreeding in any species really is not good. It’s not my ethics that knows this, it is fact and proof when genetically things go a rye. If you breed Y x Z and the offspring are eyeless and or deformed. Then you try it again with the same said result. Maybe it’s a clue.

Line breeding takes a lot longer but if it’s done too heavily you can get the same results.

As I stated before I am not against line breeding or inbreeding. I will not inbreed anything. Ever. I have seen the ramifications of it. I don’t care to cause that to any one, or thing. I know people that have inbreed balls as well as other reptiles and or animals and had disastrous results.

Believe what you want. It doesn't affect me in any way, shape or form.