'04 Albino Spiders (dialup HELL)

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Originally Posted by hhw

Out of curiousity Kara, how many lines and how many bp's do you average in each of your projects?

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In what regard? As in, how many of each morph do we have, or what?
As far as lines go, many we've developed here & supplemented with WC stock when it came available. Some morphs have ever only had one animal come out of the wild, and those we work to outcross (often into many other different mutations) as much as possible.

As far as actual numbers go, well, that's classified. ;)

K

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Originally Posted by mr.paintball26

man dude thoes are SWEET man they are so bright and nice how big are they??

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Well, the little ones just hatched a couple of days ago. The '03 animal is around 28" long.

K

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Originally Posted by KLG

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Originally Posted by hhw

Out of curiousity Kara, how many lines and how many bp's do you average in each of your projects?

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In what regard? As in, how many of each morph do we have, or what?
As far as lines go, many we've developed here & supplemented with WC stock when it came available. Some morphs have ever only had one animal come out of the wild, and those we work to outcross (often into many other different mutations) as much as possible.

As far as actual numbers go, well, that's classified. ;)

K

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For how many bp's, how many breeders do you have for each project. Since you mentioned you only hatched out 5 eggs each year, it sounds as if you don't have that many females for this particular project, which I just though to be a bit surprising. I would've expected you to have anywhere up to 10 females, or are you deliberately producing them in limited numbers?

As for the number of lines, if you were to start on a brand new project with just a single male, and x number of unrelated females, how many females would you use? Would you need 2 to the power of however many generations you would plan to work with in order to be able to offer unrelated offspring (with the exception of half-siblings in the first generation). I guess this is the extreme case, with absolutely minimal inbreeding... I guess I'm just curious exactly how much outbreeding you do. But without divulging too much confidential information, could you give any rough ballpark?

As of yet, I'm planning to work in 6 different lines to my pastel project, which I can still work out minimal inbreeding by only using males from 2 of the lines and all females from the other 4 to still roughly get 4 for the most part unrelated lines, but with specific pairings from the offspring of one male to the other's. I would then still be able to offer 2 different lines the next generation that are mostly unrelated, but greatly reduce the number of animals I would need in my breeding stock (that I would need for 8 lines). Ignoring your own practices, and basing your opinion on industry norms, how would this rate as far as inbreeding/outbreeding goes on a scale of 1 to 10? (1 being breeding mothers who are daughters who are sisters who are cousins, and 10 being introducing as much new blood as the better of the big breeders out there).

Sorry for the long post; I'm just very curious about things like this :P

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Originally Posted by hhw

For how many bp's, how many breeders do you have for each project. Since you mentioned you only hatched out 5 eggs each year, it sounds as if you don't have that many females for this particular project, which I just though to be a bit surprising. I would've expected you to have anywhere up to 10 females, or are you deliberately producing them in limited numbers?

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Well, we don't have all the control over the numbers we produce. Welcome to whiffing - it absolutely sucks, and it absolutely can and will happen to everyone at some time or another. Last year was the first year we produced Albino Spiders, and it took 3 tries to do so. We got albinos, Spider het albinos, and het albinos out of the first 2 clutches, and didn't hit the Albino Spider until the 3rd clutch. This year we only bred a couple of females for this project. We whiffed on the first clutch - no Albino Spiders. Don't forget that we have other projects to use our albino females for as well. You can't put all your "eggs" (females) in one basket (or project) & still do various other combos. Also, don't forget that the unexpected can also happen - eggs can go bad, females may not go a certain year, sometimes you get slugs that reduce your number of potential offspring from the start - lots and lots of variables. Now balance that with trying to decide what critters you're going to devote to what project...

Another perspective, too, on limited numbers...we made the decision to move our collection this year, into a new facility. While the move was done as smoothly as possible (and huge props to our crew for making that happen -we're almost done!), moving into a new environment typically throws a wrench in the works, and that happened here. It basically set our season back some - which is why we're just now seeing clutches hatch, and we still have a lot of females left to go, on top of what's gearing up for the coming season.

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Originally Posted by hhw

As for the number of lines, if you were to start on a brand new project with just a single male, and x number of unrelated females, how many females would you use? Would you need 2 to the power of however many generations you would plan to work with in order to be able to offer unrelated offspring (with the exception of half-siblings in the first generation). I guess this is the extreme case, with absolutely minimal inbreeding... I guess I'm just curious exactly how much outbreeding you do. But without divulging too much confidential information, could you give any rough ballpark?

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Well, we do a lot of outbreeding, but to some extent linebreeding is necessary. There's not a set formula to how many females are devoted to a specific project - it's more of, what do we want to produce, what females & males do we need to pair up to do so - what's the best way to get there? Obviously you a male can breed multiple females...it's also possible to stress a male out by breeding him to too many females. As long as males are solid & raring to go, they'll be bred to however many females are part of the plan for any given project - but once again, we don't have a set number. The more the merrier! That's a big reason we just built our new place - to have room for all these snakes!

As far as having unrelated stock - we produce enough from various different projects to have unrelated babies most of the year, and every year we raise up normal females to put back into each project to increase genetic diversity. Normal females are a wonderful thing!

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Originally Posted by hhw

As of yet, I'm planning to work in 6 different lines to my pastel project, which I can still work out minimal inbreeding by only using males from 2 of the lines and all females from the other 4 to still roughly get 4 for the most part unrelated lines, but with specific pairings from the offspring of one male to the other's. I would then still be able to offer 2 different lines the next generation that are mostly unrelated, but greatly reduce the number of animals I would need in my breeding stock (that I would need for 8 lines). Ignoring your own practices, and basing your opinion on industry norms, how would this rate as far as inbreeding/outbreeding goes on a scale of 1 to 10? (1 being breeding mothers who are daughters who are sisters who are cousins, and 10 being introducing as much new blood as the better of the big breeders out there).

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I have no idea. To my knowledge no one has polled the industry on inbreeding/outcrossing. It's a no-brainer that you have to be responsible with your bloodlines to avoid producing junk, but I think that balls are a bit hardier than some other species - i.e. boas, Burms, even retics, where there have been results of inbreeding depression, especially in albinos of each species. I don't think we've seen it to that extent with balls yet. The problem with inbreeding/linebreeding is that people tend to do it without thinking of the big picture. Sure, they may have a totally sexy snake & can't wait to breed dad back to a daughter to see if it's genetic, but what if both of them are crappy feeders...and their kids are crappy feeders? That can add YEARS to a project, literally. So here you have this great snake with potential het offspring, and it takes 5 years to raise it & breed it back just to get a homozygous result...this is where sheer numbers come into play - having enough good, solid, charge-ahead type snakes that pound food, thrive, are hardy & great breeders - having those animals can make such a big difference.

I realize I've gone off on a tangent & not put too fine a point on answering your question about industry norms, but that's because I don't quite believe there are such norms to a T. Everyone does things a little differently, so I can only answer on my own experience.

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Originally Posted by hhw

Sorry for the long post; I'm just very curious about things like this :P

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No worries!

K