is this ok?

i was wondering if you guys breed siblings with the parents or is that simply not the done thing?
if the answers yes then would they mate ok?

thanks...

Yes, most breeders do that. I'll be doing it, eventually.

That is normally done when trying to prove out a new morph of the recessive nature. It won't hurt but it is better to outcross and breed unrelated animals.

Like they said, it's done, but it's best to limit it to proving a new morph or proving out poss hets. Whenever possible, it's best to outcross.

It's called line-breeding, and it's not quite as problematic as inbreeding (breeding sibling to sibling), but it's not something you want to do several times in a row. The danger with incestuous breeding is that any genetic flaws (as well as desireable mutations) will be fixed and expressed. This makes genetic flaws pile up, and increases the risk of low fertility and defects. In general, reptiles appear to be somewhat sturdier when it comes to holding up under incestuous breeding than mammals are, but eventually they too will fall prey to a pile of recessive defects that have been made visible through generations of in/line breeding.

thanks for the info. the reason i ask is because i may be looking to buy a dom or co-dom female morph to breed with my normal male in a few years time. after a first clutch i would like to hang on to one of the siblings to breed with the mum and go for a super morph.

dont get me wrong i wouldnt do it for money just the fact that im fascinated by all aspects of royals and that would be the ultimate experience.

if i were to get a mojave, what would be the realistic result of getting a blue eye lucy from mojave x mojave? same goes for the other co-doms.

thanks again for the replies!
Mike...

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Originally Posted by rottendj

thanks for the info. the reason i ask is because i may be looking to buy a dom or co-dom female morph to breed with my normal male in a few years time. after a first clutch i would like to hang on to one of the siblings to breed with the mum and go for a super morph.

dont get me wrong i wouldnt do it for money just the fact that im fascinated by all aspects of royals and that would be the ultimate experience.

if i were to get a mojave, what would be the realistic result of getting a blue eye lucy from mojave x mojave? same goes for the other co-doms.

thanks again for the replies!
Mike...

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A mojo to mojo breeding carries the odds of each egg having a 1:4 chance for producing a BEL

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rottendj

thanks for the info. the reason i ask is because i may be looking to buy a dom or co-dom female morph to breed with my normal male in a few years time. after a first clutch i would like to hang on to one of the siblings to breed with the mum and go for a super morph.

dont get me wrong i wouldnt do it for money just the fact that im fascinated by all aspects of royals and that would be the ultimate experience.

if i were to get a mojave, what would be the realistic result of getting a blue eye lucy from mojave x mojave? same goes for the other co-doms.

thanks again for the replies!
Mike...

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A mojave x mojave should produce 25% BELs, 50% mojos and 25% normals. A lot of people do this. It's not as harmful to do with reptiles, but if you can get fresh animals, it's better to use the new genes, than to inbreed year after year.

awesome!!! i love white snakes!!!
i must have forgot to mention i would use the sibling just once to get the super, then pass it on to someone and maybe get something else. who knows what will happen years down the road! definately hang on to the blue lucy, my first, only and normal royal and see what happens.

sorry for the questions but what would happen if you cross a blue lucy x normal or other co-dom?

thanks again!

x normal you'd get 100% whatever you bred to get the lucy... if it was a mojo lucy you'd get 100% mojo, if it was a lesser lucy you'd get 100% lesser..

x another co-dom, for instance pastel, you'd get 100% lesser/mojo (depending on which lucy you're using) and 50% of those would also be pastel.

okay sounds like a win win situation but im a bit confused on the last bit :confused: read it plenty but cant get my head round it :(

For basic genetic stuff this is a good site to start at....

http://www.ballpython.ca/genetics.html

For a far more indepth genetics lesson, grab a pencil and some paper and prepare to get to know the punnet square LOL.....

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/genetics_intro.html

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

It's called line-breeding, and it's not quite as problematic as inbreeding (breeding sibling to sibling), but it's not something you want to do several times in a row. The danger with incestuous breeding is that any genetic flaws (as well as desireable mutations) will be fixed and expressed. This makes genetic flaws pile up, and increases the risk of low fertility and defects. In general, reptiles appear to be somewhat sturdier when it comes to holding up under incestuous breeding than mammals are, but eventually they too will fall prey to a pile of recessive defects that have been made visible through generations of in/line breeding.

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Perhaps this is something specific to ball pythons (that I've never heard) but your definitions of line breeding an inbreeding is completely different than the accepted definitions in biology.

Inbreeding is breeding animals separated by no more than a single generation. That's sibling/sibling or sibling/parent. Line breeding is breeding animals that have a single common ancestor. For example, there is only one true Lemon Pastel that NERD brought in from Africa. So if I breed two true Lemons together, I'm line breeding (they are both ancestors of NERDs original WC). Outcrossing (or outbreeding), to continue the example from above, is breeding a Lemon to any animal that isn't a desendant of the original WC Lemon.

As for the sibling to sibling breeding being "more problematic" than sibling to parent, it's actually the opposite. We can determine an inbreeding coefficient using Wright's path.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2102/...0218dba2_o.gif

Mars has two alleles for anything, one from the his sire one from his dame. So let's pick one of those alleles, call it a1. Venus has a 50% chance of inheriting a1. Jupitor (sorry, it's late, so I get to make spelling errors) also has a 50% chance of in inheriting a1 from Mars. Mercury has also has a 50% chance of inheriting a1 from Venus. Since these are dependent probabilities (Mercury getting a1 from Venus depends on Venus getting a1 from Mars) so we multiply them. 50% * 50% = 25%.

The same thing occurs on the Jupitor side of things, meaning there's a 25% chance of inheriting a1 from Mars (again) on the Jupitor side. Now these two variables are independant of each other... so we add them together, and multiply by the number of variables. So, 25%+25%/2 = 25%.

Now here's our parent/sibling breeding:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2224/...9e5fa7e3_o.gif

So the odds are the same coming from Venus. 25% (using the same as above). Since there is a step removed from Mars to Mercury, we have a 50% chance of Mercury inheriting a1 from Mars directly. So 50% + 25% / 2 = 37.5%.

In inbreeding, the higher the coefficient, the higher the probability that any given gene will be autozygous. The more autozygous genes, the higher the probability of genetic defects. But, like the Punnett Square, this works per pair gene. So if a ball python has 10,000 genes (I pulled that out of air), and each gene has a 37.5% chance of being autozygous, the odds are extremely likely there will be a lot of autozygous genes (in fact, if this is true, and I chose a relatively low number of genes, there is a 100% probability that at least one pair of alleles will by autozygous).

The biggest point here is that the more outbreeding that occurs, the larger the gene pool. The larger the gene pool, the fewer chances of genetic defects directly caused by autozygous genes.

It's important to understand something. Inbreeding does NOT cause genetic defects. What DOES happen is defective genes can become more apparent when they are homozygous. For example, let's pretend the a1 allele from the above causes a hereditary respiratory problem.

If Mercury gets 2 copies of a1, Mercury will then be homozygous for the respiratory problem. The greater the number of autozygous genes, the greater the probability that the animal will be homozygous for multiple genetic defects. Eventually, Mercury's offspring (if inbreed enough) could have hundreds, or even thousands of defective genes, causing hundreds or thousands of negative health issues.

The moral of the story, outbreeding is a good thing. The wider the gene pool, the lower the probability of inheriting autozygous genes, which may potentially be defective in some way or another. While it may seem like reptiles are less apt to have problems with inbreeding, the reality is, they seem to have fewer genetically defective alleles than humans do.

Sorry for the book I just wrote ;).

http://bowlingsite.mcf.com/Genetics/Inbreeding.html

"Breeders of purebred livestock have introduced a term, linebreeding, to cover the milder forms of inbreeding. Exactly what the difference is between linebreeding and inbreeding tends to be defined differently for each species and often for each breed within the species."

So yeah, I was taught that linebreeding refers to offspring to parent breedings, and most likely it was correct in context. :)

In any case, the problem with a sibling/sibling breeding is that there is a risk of the siblings sharing more than 50% of their genes. With a child to parent breeding, 50% is the maximum that they can share. The more genes shared in common, the higher the risk of two detrimental recessives being paired. That's why sibling X sibling breeding is considered less desireable than parent X offspring breeding, in general. The siblings might also share fewer genes in common, but there's no way to know in advance apart from DNA testing.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

http://bowlingsite.mcf.com/Genetics/Inbreeding.html

"Breeders of purebred livestock have introduced a term, linebreeding, to cover the milder forms of inbreeding. Exactly what the difference is between linebreeding and inbreeding tends to be defined differently for each species and often for each breed within the species."

So yeah, I was taught that linebreeding refers to offspring to parent breedings, and most likely it was correct in context. :)

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The problem is, breeding parent/sibling definately is NOT a milder form of inbreeding. Breeding grandsiblings would be considered line breeding, because it extends beyond first generation.

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In any case, the problem with a sibling/sibling breeding is that there is a risk of the siblings sharing more than 50% of their genes. With a child to parent breeding, 50% is the maximum that they can share. The more genes shared in common, the higher the risk of two detrimental recessives being paired. That's why sibling X sibling breeding is considered less desireable than parent X offspring breeding, in general. The siblings might also share fewer genes in common, but there's no way to know in advance apart from DNA testing.

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The odds of sibling to sibling sharing 50% (or more) of their genes is significantly less likely. That's why the inbreeding coiefecient is so much lower when breeding sibling to sibling. When I breed a parent to sibling, I have a 37.5% chance with every gene, that it's going to be autozygous. Versus siblings, in which every gene has a 25% chance of being autozygous.

For the offspring of breeding siblings to have 50% of their genes autozygous, it would require a statistical variance of 200%... that's huge by any standard.

this all sounds very intersting indeed but is very difficult for me to understand :oops: , however thankyou for sharing your expert advice :)
regards, Mike...

Yeah, I'm lost as to how it's not exactly 50% shared genes between a parent and child.
I do see how it would be a low chance for siblings to share more than 50% of their genes, but it's still possible. *shrug*

In any case, there is generally little reason to breed siblings together, whereas breeding back to a parent to uncover recessives serves a clear purpose.

None of it's something to be done over multiple generations, though.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

Yeah, I'm lost as to how it's not exactly 50% shared genes between a parent and child.
I do see how it would be a low chance for siblings to share more than 50% of their genes, but it's still possible. *shrug*

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Well they DO share exactly 50% of the genes. But the odds of offspring being autozyous are low (hence the 37.5% statistic). If the parent has alleles a1 and a2, and offspring has alleles a1 and a3, the odds are actually higher that the offspring between parent and offspring will produce non-autozygous.

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In any case, there is generally little reason to breed siblings together, whereas breeding back to a parent to uncover recessives serves a clear purpose.

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Impatience ;).

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None of it's something to be done over multiple generations, though.

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I agree there.