Breeding related hets

[nikevijo]

I see many people selling het pairs that came from the same clutch. Is it bad to breed them to eachother?

[SNIKTTIME]

No problems that I am aware of breeding them together other than the fact that the male will be ready to breed before the female.

[crusher]

while its always better to diversify the bloodline, its not going to give you cyclops snakes or anything...

[twistedtails]

You should outcross new blood every other generation.

[kc261]

You should outcross new blood every other generation.

Do you have a source for that, to state it like a fact? Or is that just your personal opinion?

A VERY large number of breeders do at least some inbreeding. Some examples of when you might do it:
- proving out a new morph
- buy a pair of hets that are from the same clutch, or are perhaps half-brother/half-sister, then breed them together to get a visual
- buy a het male, breed him to a normal, then breed him to his phet daughters to get a visual
- buy a co-dom male, breed him to a normal, then breed him to his morph daughters to get the super
- produce double hets, then breed them to each other to shoot for the double recessive
- produce a co-dom het for a recessive, then breed them to each other, or breed one of them back to the recessive parent to shoot for the combo
- breed 2 co-doms to get the combo, then breed the combo back to one of its parents to get something like a killer bee
- breed 2 co-doms to get the combo, then breed the combos together to get the super form of the combo
- breed a co-dom combo to a 3rd co-dom, if you don't get lucky and hit the triple on the first try, breed one of the babies back to the combo parent to increase the odds of hitting the triple (example, breed a bee to a pin, if you get a blast you could breed it back to the bee, increasing your chances of hitting the spinner blast and also opening up the possibility hitting super pastels, killer bees, super blasts, and what I guess would be called a spinner super blast)

Here are some examples where you would inbreed for more than a single generation:
- once you get that visual recessive from your pair of related hets, breed it back to its het parent to double yours odds of getting visuals
- same thing with most of the other examples above

Here is an example where you can skip a generation, but it is still more than one generation of inbreeding, just not in a row:
- once you get that visual recessive, breed it to something unrelated, then breed those offspring together to get a combo

Even with all that inbreeding going on in the BP world, there are very few reports of babies that have issues that are believed to be due to inbreeding, so breeding related hets together should be fine.

One thing to keep in mind is that inbreeding does NOT cause deformities or other issues to spontaneously appear. What it does do is highly increase the chances of hidden recessive genes to show themselves. If your snake has a hidden recessive gene, then it is likely to show up if you inbreed. This is both good and bad. If that hidden gene is for a new morph, it is awesome! Even if it is something like being het for albino when you didn't know it, that is still an unexpected bonus. The bad side is when there are hidden genes for something lethal or at least undesirable, and inbreeding causes those to show up. However, there is still a positive flip side to that, because if you inbreed for a few generations and nothing bad shows up, you can be reasonably confident that that line of snakes if not carrying any hidden defective genes.

[twistedtails]

Maybe I should have worded it a little different...It is recommended to out cross whenever possible. Every living thing has bad genes somewhere in it's DNA. The more you breed the same blood, the more likely it is to line those genes up.

Here is a little proof for you on bad genes...
http://www.ulf.org/patients/inheritance.html

[Brandon Osborne]

You must also take into consideration, snakes are not migratory animals. Therefore, inbreeding is very common even in nature. It will take more generations than we could count before we should see negative effects.

In my opinion, the problems associated with Caramels, Spiders, Cinny/Black Pastels are not from inbreeding, but are problems with the gene itself. In some cases new phenotypes evolve from inbreeding in nature.

[kc261]

Maybe I should have worded it a little different...It is recommended to out cross whenever possible. Every living thing has bad genes somewhere in it's DNA. The more you breed the same blood, the more likely it is to line those genes up.

Somebody must have forgotten to tell those lab mice that are essentially genetically identical and fully homozygous due to MANY multiple generations of inbreeding. They seem to be doing just fine. And it isn't a fluke... there are many different strains of highly inbred lab mice.

Here is a little proof for you on bad genes...
http://www.ulf.org/patients/inheritance.html

Hmm. I don't see anything on that page about inbreeding. It does talk about inheriting genetic defects from your parents, and the various method of inheritance (dominant, recessive, sex-linked, etc.). But I'm not debating the possibility of inheriting bad genes. Also, that link just isn't very good. When talking about dominant inheritance, it says:

A dominantly inherited disease is one in which a single defective copy of a gene can cause disease. This generally means that there are not carriers of the disease as there are in a disease that is recessively inherited. In order for a couple to have an affected child, they would both most likely need to have the disease themselves.

Uh...wait a minute... since when do both parents need to have a dominant gene for the child to get it???

Anyway, I didn't say it was impossible for inbreeding to turn up genetic defects. In fact, I stated that it does INCREASE the chances of bad genes showing themselves.

What I am arguing against is the almost paranoid fear many people seem to have of inbreeding. A large number of people apparently believe that inbreeding causes mutations. It doesn't. It just makes already existing mutations more likely to show themselves.

I'm also not arguing against your recommendation to outcross whenever possible, although I don't believe it is as necessary as you seem to. I did think your original wording "you should outcross new blood every other generation" was a bit strong.

BTW, in case this wasn't clear, in my first post, only the first 2 questions were directed at you. The rest was intended to answer the OP's question.