Rules of inbreeding?

So Im reading alot on morph lines, how colors and combos came about and of course theres referances to breeding daughters back to fathers, sons to mothers and so on.

My question is, whats considered acceptable inbreeding and where should a line be drawn for the sake of the animals? Not their morality of course I know they dont care, but their over all health.

Rule #1: breeding siblings is worse than child to parent

Rule #2: Cross out proven genes as much as possible

That's about it. I haven't personally seen any issues caused by inbreeding. All the issues that were supposedly due to inbreeding (caramels kinking, spiders wobbling) have been pretty much accepted by the community as being caused by the morph gene, thus impossible to breed out.

With morphs, we're dealing with a fairly select group of animals. Even with WCs coming into the country, the focus is more and more on morph combos. This is a fairly strong limit on the genetic diversity, so inbreeding is inevitable even without direct sibling to sibling or parent to child breeding.

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Originally Posted by mainbutter

Rule #1: breeding siblings is worse than child to parent

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I've seen this before, but I'd like to know WHY? Or see a source.

I've tried to figure it out before, but it seems to me like on average it is the same. Parent/child breedings will always have exactly 50% of the same genetic material. Siblings/sibling breedings could, in theory, have anywhere between 0-100% of the same genetic material, but it should be 50% on average. So what makes it worse?

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Originally Posted by kc261

I've seen this before, but I'd like to know WHY? Or see a source.

I've tried to figure it out before, but it seems to me like on average it is the same. Parent/child breedings will always have exactly 50% of the same genetic material. Siblings/sibling breedings could, in theory, have anywhere between 0-100% of the same genetic material, but it should be 50% on average. So what makes it worse?

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You don't want your son and daughter mating do you? That's why its so much worse.

Stop when your hatchlings turn into killer Burmese hybrids.
(j/k).

There aren't any rules, because no one yet knows how much inbreeding these animals can tolerate before detrimental traits such as poor fertility and deformities crop up. The answer is 'more than mammals', we know that much at least. Use common sense, and don't carry it on for numerous generations.

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Originally Posted by steveboos

You don't want your son and daughter mating do you? That's why its so much worse.

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They dont want to mate their son or daughter either. ;)
I think the question is, whats the genetic draw back of siblings mating versus a parent to the offspring.

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Originally Posted by steveboos

You don't want your son and daughter mating do you? That's why its so much worse.

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yea but same could be as the question you as a parent wouldnt wanna mate with your son or daughter would you?

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Originally Posted by Monty

yea but same could be as the question you as a parent wouldnt wanna mate with your son or daughter would you?

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We can always hope!!:colbert::colbert:

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Originally Posted by Sariel

We can always hope!!:colbert::colbert:

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lol yea especially in the world we live in.:O:O

From what I have been able to gather up on this subject is that no more than 5 generations should be line bred. I do not know why it was 5 generations and honestly I can not remember where I saw that but for me personally I only do 3 generations and then out cross. For example Male 1 and Female 1 breed, Baby 1 that is held back is bred to Female 1, Baby 2 is held back and bred to Baby 1 The resulting offspring are then bred to dofferent animals that are not related or to beter state that not directly related within 5 generations to the best of my knowledge.

The tricky part is when you have 1 Male and 3 Females because then you could take a baby from Female on and breed it to a baby frome Female 2 and so on which in my mind would be very different only because they would have different geentics from the different Females used for the breedings.

Another tricky one is multiple sire clutches.... Yeah lets not get into that part of it.

Basically what everyone is saying is that the inbreeding/line breeding can be done a lot of times and so far nothing has been seen that would indicate that this is bad for the snakes but the long term effects have not been seen yet as these animals have a long life span.

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Originally Posted by steveboos

You don't want your son and daughter mating do you? That's why its so much worse.

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Originally Posted by Monty

yea but same could be as the question you as a parent wouldnt wanna mate with your son or daughter would you?

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Seeing as Ball pythons don't have morals these arguments don't really come into it do they. The question as someone already said is wether and when it would start to negatively effect them genetically/pysiologically :rolleyes:

lol fishboy i know i was just stating it would be just as bad if someones kids mated just the same as a parent and kids. when it starts to effect them negetively isnt specifically known but most people stop at 5 generations from what i've read