breeding siblings?

[KenW]

This morning I popped my three het albino hatchlings. I have one male and two females. I told my wife this news and I told her maybe I could sell this trio through the local reptile society to someone who wanted to try breeding them for albinos. My wife's reaction was "Ew! They're brother and sisters!" I hadn't really considered if that was a problem. Are there any issues with breeding siblings together? For that matter, if I were to keep one of the females and raise her up to breed with my albino (the father) would that be an issue? I believe that inbreeding of mammals can be problematic but that inbreeding reptiles isn't a problem. Is that true? Anybody have experience with this? Thanks in advance.

[The Serpent Merchant]

If possible inbreeding should be avoided, but a few generations of doing so isn't going to cause any issues.

The only way we can prove out new recessive morphs is inbreeding.

[SlitherinSisters]

I have a pair of siblings that I'm using to prove out a dinker project. I've breed them together 3 times, for a total of 11 eggs and no issues. Most animals can be inbreed for several generations without issues. Even well breed and registered animals like horses, dogs, cats, etc, have a guideline for allowable generation inbreeding. There have been studies done on breeding mice siblings for generations and it took a ridiculous amount of inbreeding before there were defects. People blow inbreeding issues way out of proportion. Just think about any animal in the wild, it's pretty darn likely they are going to breed with family members. Nature took that into consideration.

[satomi325]

Think of like this. In the wild, snakes are a non-migratory species. They live in the same area year after year. They don't distinguish relatives from the next available mate. You can bet they breed with family members.

Its fine to breed sibs. I plan to for my double het project.
Inbreeding can go ways. You can either perpetuate bad genes or you can perpetuate good genes. Its not always a bad thing. Either way, it just makes the animal have a higher homozygosity for certain genes.

Say X was a deleterious allele.
Snake 1 has abc genes.
Snake 2 has def genes.
Snake 3 has Xgh genes.
Snake 4 has Xgh genes

If snake 1 and 2 inbreed, they're only going to breed more neutral or good genes with little to no negative effect. If snake 3 and 4 inbreed, you have a high chance of passing that deleterious X gene into the offspring and line.

So, inbreeding doesn't always mean its bad or produces deformed weak animals.

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[Trackstrong83]

Yep for my killer pied project I plan on breeding siblings.

[Pythonfriend]

from what ive gathered, one or two generations of inbreeding are fine, but then you should do outcrossing.

something like an inbreeding coefficient can be calculated, and with the right ways of outcrossing that number can be reset to zero. When parent A and parent B have completely different ancestors, the offspring will be back down to an inbreeding coefficient of zero, even if both parent snakes on their own do have an inbreeding coefficient. Many reputable breeders make use of that "reset button" and regularly do outcrossing to keep up the genetic health, and this gets easier to do with a bigger collection.

a calculator for inbreeding coefficients i found, it also lists which ancestor contributed how much of the genetics:
http://www.czerwonytrop.com/inb/index.php?full (its designed for dogs, but the math is exactly the same, works just as good for snakes).

if you keep doing it for multiple generations, the first thing that will happen is that fertility rates go down. but one or two generations is generally accepted, and often done, especially in recessive or double recessive projects.