More dreamsicle advice!

Currently I've got a female pied 100% het lav albino, and she's starting to get large enough that I'm considering a mate for her.

I'm doing this all through RDR, as he sold me her originally and I prefer to stick with somebody I feel is known and trustworthy/experienced in this type of thing.

It seems likely that saving up for an actual dreamsicle male for her will be unrealistically expensive, unless maybe I wait another year to actually purchase it. But if I do this, she misses a potential breeding season, I think.

The other option would be to get either a lav albino 100% het pied, or a pied 100% het lav albino, which I could afford to do much sooner.

Questions:

-The dreamsicle is about 3x the price of the hets, which are both the same price. But, unless I'm misunderstanding this, the dreamsicle is twice as than the male hets to produce more dreams when paired with my het female, no?

-Given this knowledge, is it worth the price of the het just to get in the extra breeding season, even if I end up maybe selling some of those babies and getting something back and later buying an actual dream? Or is missing the first year probably not that important overall?

Lastly:

-If I get one of the two hets, does it make more sense to get the pied one? Because then I know I'm guaranteed either pied 100% het lav albino, like I started out with, or dreams? Or does it really not matter because no matter what I produce it'll be het for dreamsicle if it isn't actually one, and lav albino is also valued like pied?

Thanks, sorry for all the noob questions.

dreamsicle to pied het lavender gives you 50% dreamsicles, 50% pied het lavender.

lavender het pied and pied het lavender gives you 25% of each: dreamsicle, pied het lavender, lavender het pied, and double hets.

since you have a pied het lavender, lavender het pied is good, because it avoids possible hets, it will all be 100% het or visual.

i would get the lavender het pied. then just continue with the pied het lavender to lavender het pied breeding until you get your own male dreamsicle. if your lavender het pied male gets redundant later on, i guess as a proven breeder lavender het pied with the paperwork from the original breeder it will sell easily.

one thing to consider is inbreeding, i would attempt to keep it low and to make plans to reset inbreeding to zero later on. since you get both from the same breeder, they are probarbly already closely related. getting records on parents and grandparents of both snakes is really important, otherwise you cannot know how much inbreeding has accumulated already. generally people say inbreeding is safe for a while, but if it continues for too many generation, fertility goes down and then birth defects go up. one plan would be to continue the lavender het pied and pied het lavender breeding, and to get double het females from a different breeder who produced them with his own lavender albino and pied stock. and once you get a male dreamsicle, you can breed him to these unrelated double het females. or you could get just a female pied and a female lavender from different sources and use the male dreamsicle to make lavender het pieds and pied het lavenders. or make your own double hets using different stock and work them into the project.

(oh and, just in case it comes up.... yeah, inbreeding in reptiles happens a lot in nature, and BPs seem quite resilient to it, that doesnt change the fact that its still harmful. natures punishment is a weakened immune system and reduced reproductive success.)

If you can't get the dreamsicle male yet, I would STRONGLY encourage you to go lavender het pied rather than pied het lav, then you will know that all the babies are 100% double hets, and it still gives you 1/4 odds of hitting the dreamsicle which is really not bad. Plus babies that are 100% double hets or visual + 100% hets will be more valuable than 66% hets, and probably easier to sell.

I vote for male lavender albino het pied as well. I also agree that you should be sure to get an unrelated animal. Unfortunately this is harder said than done with snakes but you should try even though you will most likely be buying from another breeder. Inbreeding in snakes is not horrible but I strongly believe this is why some lines of caramel albinos tend to kink. Spine kinking in animals (all vertebrates) is a classic sign of inbreeding. I see it all the time in my rat colony. When I start to see a lot of kinking in the tail I cull all my males and buy in from a new population. Good luck to you.

once more about the inbreeding....

once you have a visual, and if you are willing to cooperate with other breeders, it gets really easy. you can always breed your dreamsicle to one additional female, maybe an enchi or something, something completely unrelated. and you get a clutch of 100% double hets, maybe wth an extra gene, and these sell quite well. you just need to trade these for other double hets, from different breeders, that started their own project independently. and later you can maybe just trade dreamsicle hatchlings for dreamsicle hatchlings.

and here you have an inbreeding calculator, its originally for dogs but the math is the same for all diploid sexually reproducing species:
http://www.czerwonytrop.com/inb/index.php?full of course you cannot properly use it unless you have records going back a few generations, the more the better. one thing to notice is: if you breed one badly inbred male to a badly inbred female, but the male and the female have no known common ancestry, if they are from different stock, the offspring will have an inbreeding coefficient of zero. thats the "reset button".

also you only need to do this every few years. once you have a few pairings going where the male is unrelated or only a distant cousin to the females, you just continue these pairings year after year. and one generation of inbreeding is always quite acceptable, so, assuming that you raise up hatchlings to make new dreamsicle breeding pairs each year, you would only need to make a trade every two years. and it gets easier the more BPs you have.

Thank you all very much, this was immensely helpful. And the good thing about getting this advice is it means I can stop stressing about saving up (for now) and go ahead with my project sooner.

Y'all rock!

OK just got photos in from RD! Which one should I chose from amongst these 3 males? I'm leaning towards #2 because to me, it has the coolest/cleanest "alien head" pattern going down its side.

1:

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...s708eba42.jpeg

2:

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...sc57db1ea.jpeg

3:

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...s16bfe6e6.jpeg

My girlfriend likes 1, but as I said above, I think I'm leaning towards 2. Would love any tie-breaker opinions!

I like #1 also.

they are all 3 very nice, and very similar. same colors, same body shape. i agree that the pattern is most organized in number 2.

since they are all from the same clutch, i would go for the heaviest one, or for the one that has eaten most often. that is, if there is any difference in the feeding response, i would make that the deciding factor.


one thing confuses me: the data on the cards says it was a lavender het pied male to a dreamsicle female, and on the bottom it says "1.2 dream 2.1 lavender het dream". how come its 3 males? it should be two lavender het dream males, and one lavender het dream female. i guess one was first believed to be a female and then turned out to be a male or something.

Thanks again, PF.

Yeah I think it's probably a mistake. I'm pretty confident he's not going to accidentally sell me a female or something.

There's a less than 10g weight difference between the 3, so I'm not super concerned. Although #2 is the lightest.