Tips on Selective Breeding

[Beardedragon]

Matt that spider is off the charts

Ditto

Thanks Hes a 08 but im paying the price of a 05 male pb spider for him With luck he might go late season

I cant tell you how many spiders I looked at just to find him! Im super happy having three morphs that are extreamly good examples of themselves.

[Emilio]

I'm interested in trying this out this year. Jamie has a GORGEOUS normal girl that is so light and pale yellow... it's difficult to describe her without a picture. I'd like to breed her to the butter we just got to see if it has any effect on cleaning up the colors and making a better looking butter. I'm not exactly sure it will work that way, but since we plan on having more than one clutch of butters, we'll be able to test my theory. I definitely believe in selective breeding - I'm incredibly picky when buying anything and while we're still breeding lots of normals I want to be very selective in which females go w/ what morph.

I'm doing the same with my lesser, I'm breeding him to three very different girl's this coming season.

[kc261]

Thanks everyone for all the replies! Lots of great input. I'm going to comment on some of them individually and hopefully keep this discussion rolling!

if and when i start selective breeding i would look for a three things.
1. color. Color imo is a deciding factor for me. If i am looking to buy a snake i would want one with outstanding colors that last threw out the snakes life.

2. pattern. A snake with a unique pattern can be the deciding factor between one snake to another for me.

3. structure. Make sure the snake is structurly sound no deffects ect....
all of this was based on 2 cents

I think for me, what is being termed here as "structure" is the most important part. Breeding an animal that has defects (other than the desired "defects" that some morphs might be considered) just makes no sense to me. I know some people do, and in some cases they may have reason to believe it isn't a genetic defect that can be passed on, or in other cases they may be trying to separate a structural defect from a color or pattern morph which tends to have that defect.

This bring up a related question of how bad does it have to be before you consider it a defect? That's probably a big enough subject for its own thread, and I'd rather not get into it here.

But once you get beyond the healthy animal... what next. You are pretty much left with color & pattern, right? That's what I want to talk about.

[kc261]

I think pattern and structure, as said above, are the two most important.

If you are looking at pastel crosses, get a nice light or golden normal female.

I have a really reduced normal female that I may throw with my spider someday just to see if the spider offspring are more reduced than the father. I don't think it's been established, however, what effect the normal parent has with the spider offspring. I think it will be interesting to see.

JonV

For pastels, crossing it with a light colored normal seems obvious. But what about the difference between a light colored one that has that slightly speckled look, which I assume would muddy up a pastel, or one that was slightly darker, but cleaner looking?

For the spiders, I'm sure the normal parent does have an effect. But what effect or how predictable, I have no idea. There must be some people here on bp.net who have bred enough spiders to be able to comment. Does a reduced appearing normal produce more reduced spiders than one with a busy pattern? Does a lighter color create higher white? Or maybe the presence of flames would create higher white?

[kc261]

Too many variables to make a black and white guide line. I like to look at the male and female and see if they have any traits that will compliment the others genetics. As an example: A genetic reduced combined with a non-genetic reduced may help the over all genetic reduced pattern.

Of course you don't want to breed anything with any Defect or should I say unwanted defect since a morph itself could in some cases and by some people be classified as a defect.

Also I like to keep an eye on inbreeding. A couple of times may be OK, but I can't see inbreeding for 3 or 4 generations without injecting new blood at some point.

"Too many variables..." Haha! That much I knew. I'm just hoping to get more of a general feel for what people have done and what has worked. And also what hasn't worked, so I can avoid wasting my time on it!

Good point that a morph itself could be considered a defect. Even eliminating something like spider wobbles & spins, some of the pretty colors that us humans like so much are deadly in the wild.

Inbreeding pretty much goes hand in hand with selective breeding. Altho in theory it would be possible to do lots of selective breeding without inbreeding, most of us just don't have the space & time to keep that number of animals. But I agree absolutely that one should keep an eye on how much is being done and limit it. Another good point.

[kc261]

I've been a fan of very selective breeding from the beginning, just for personal fun and creating the best line to compete with.

For example, when it was time for me to find an albino male, I found a guy who just had 6 clutches of albinos and hets hatch roughly the same time. I liked the looks of his sires, so I figured the babies would be similar.

I got in first dibs and had the pick of the litter(s) for orange/white contrast plus pattern.

Now, for outbreeding, which I still think is important even with a well bred morph like the albino, I went to a local importer/breeder and sifted through everything he had to find a female that was so orange and so black and as a bonus had a jungle-like pattern. She kept her color contrast very well, still holding onto her deep orange undertones and her black never fading, and I can't wait to produce some hets from her. While those hets are growing up, I'll be on the look out for another great looking albino male to breed with them.

I also bought some Het Albinos for this guy, but only after seeing what their parents and albino littermates looked like.

I want the highest contrast albinos on the market.

That's just my little story.

Thanks for sharing. I bet you'll have lots of competition for trying to have the highest contrast albinos around!

Do you know for sure that the orange in that normal will translate into orange in an albino? From personal experience or word of mouth? Or are you just hoping?

This brings up another question. Let's say you have an albino male, and you breed him to several females. You want to keep 5 of his het daughters to use in your breeding project. In a het, where you can't even see the morph, what do you look for in deciding which ones to hold back? And I'm only using albinos as an example; I'd be interested in hearing the answer for other recessive morphs as well.

[kc261]

Amy, Matt, and Emilio all talked about upcoming projects where they'll be breeding the same morph male to various normal females. I hope when the time comes, you guys will post threads comparing the offspring of the different mothers so we can all see how it turned out!

I think I replied to everyone now. Thanks again for all the thoughts. I hope more people will post!

[broadude]

An example of how I plan my breeding pairs selectively is:

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir



This male (on top) is my lightest Ghost and has retained those colors well. Because his patterning is a bit busy, I am hoping that the het ghost female with reduced patterning will clean up the patterning on the hatchlings a bit. She has a nice amount of flames up her sides (my pic taking skills leave a lot to be desired..but I am improving).

I try to focus on colors and patterns. There will always be a lot of "busy" patterns for those that like them. I am trying for "cleaner" patterns.

[Beardedragon]

Thanks for sharing. I bet you'll have lots of competition for trying to have the highest contrast albinos around!

Do you know for sure that the orange in that normal will translate into orange in an albino? From personal experience or word of mouth? Or are you just hoping?

This brings up another question. Let's say you have an albino male, and you breed him to several females. You want to keep 5 of his het daughters to use in your breeding project. In a het, where you can't even see the morph, what do you look for in deciding which ones to hold back? And I'm only using albinos as an example; I'd be interested in hearing the answer for other recessive morphs as well.

As for hets, ive heard that darker hets make higher contrast albinos. Ive not proven that but it makes since to me. Variables like that could come into play with alot of morphs, maybe i'll try to experiment with that?