Is this a common practice?

[Family Jewels]

Line breeding is common and sometimes a necessity. Many morphs started out as just a single specimen. It is not dangerous as long as you are breeding genetically healthy animals.

Although common, it is still irresponsible (and lazy) if you inbreed JUST to save a few bucks. If there is nothing particularly unique or special about your animals and you're not trying to prove something out, there's no good reason to risk it.

Back in the 90's and early 2000's, many breeders had a nonchalant attitude about inbreeding that led to all kinds of problems in recessive morphs. Albinos were commonly born without eyes and aside from the spider wobble, I still almost exclusively see congenital neurological defects in "line bred" recessive morphs. Double recessives are often the worst because of how many generations of inbreeding are involved. There was a big movement towards "out-crossing" lines to the point where a classified ad would specify that the het for sale was out-crossed, and many breeders added years to their projects trying to out-cross their stocks.

I think the out-crossing movement was successful enough that now there are probably very few of you who have ever seen an eye-less snake being sold at an expo (discounted of course, reassured by the breeder that it's totally not genetic).

I'm not condemning anyone who chooses to inbreed, I'm just reminding (or informing) people that this WAS a big problem in the past, and it shouldn't be so casually forgotten.