Quote Originally Posted by ScottyDsntKnow View Post
Again, I'm new to reptiles, but in the mammal world this isn't the best thing in the world. How much of a chance of birth defects do you get here and how much is too much as far as breeding to dads/moms or brothers/sisters?

And I think I understand everything now, thanks very much.
We do it all the time in mammal's with line breeding. That being said, inbreeding is relatively common among reptiles, especially ball pythons. Most wild-caught morphs must be inbred to determine the genetics of the animal. However, multiple generations of inbreeding certainly aren't a good thing. There are a lot of "opinions" on this issue, so it's best to start a new thread on it. To answer your question from my POV, it's not a major problem as long as outbreeding is used as often as possible.

Keep in mind, animals that have a massive population today came from a very small gene pool (cheetah et al).