line breeding

[limey]

ok so i have read the past articles on how bad inbreeding is and what may or may not happen. What i really want to know is how many of you guys/girls will actually inbreed and how close a generation will you do it. ie will you put son/daughter to mother/father or would you ratehr breed siblings etc .?

I have tried to keep my corns so they never have the same parents from both sides ie this year i bred my amel stripe male to a normal (no hets, although i belive its "upper keys" as it has very reduced black and yellow belly checks) female and a miami double het (anery and amel) female. from those offsrping ive kept a few of the best feeders/lookers and if they grow well etc i intend to breed them back together. This is the closest i have ever intentional bred (i realise that you never can totally be sure of the corns you are buying arent form the same parents and that most morphs come from a single line).

So what do you guys think about this then ? is that far enough apart in genral or is being catious. (assuming theres no visble defects)

thanks!

 

[Rachel]

I'm sure that this will start a huge debate but I think that 'inbreeding' is OK with corns to an extent. If you are going to be cautious then it would make no difference if you bred mother to son, father to daughter than breeding siblings. If you wanted to be really cautious, then go for 'cousins' or something a bit more removed.

Basically, if you ever want to really get into the genetics side of breeding then you would have to 'inbreed' at some point to do back crosses etc to prove hets or simply to produce a specific colour/pattern etc.

I think that this is ok so long as you outcross every so often to ensure 'fresh' genes are being introduced and thus reducing any possible problems associated with inbreeding.

I don't *think* that snakes suffer the same sort of problems that dogs/horses/people suffer from inbreeding. This is all from research though and not anything that I could personally prove. So feel free to show me hard evidence that proves me otherwise....

 

[Kat]

The whole issue with inbreeding, is that if there are hidden 'weak' genes, inbreeding is the surest way to cause them to surface. This means that if a line of snakes is good and strong, it will take a good number of generations before inbreeding problems will show up. If a line of snakes has some inherant weaknesses, inbreeding problems will show up fairly quickly. There is no good rule of thumb for how many generations or how close one can inbreed before Bad Stuff (tm) happens. If your inbred line of snakes start having problems breeding, thriving, or hatching out normally, then it's past time to have outcrossed. Even so, outcrossing won't necessarily remove the bad genes from the genepool, just bury them a little. Inbreeding again will make them resurface. Inbreeding is a judgement call, really.

That having been said, there was an article in Discover Magazine a few months back in reguards to human inbreeding. They had an instance proof of a family that bred cousin to cousin for multiple generations, and was actually better off for it than if they hadn't.

Anyway, venture with caution, and use your judgement. Inbreeding can be a useful tool, but can cause problems if not done with care.

-Kathryn

 

[limey]

It seems we may be in trouble wiht corn snakes then if we arent careful. If we believe the problems that people get with there "morphs" from just a few breedings (ie suddenly dying, large eyes, kinks, poor fertility, sterility etc) and most of the morphs come from one line then arent we just a few decades away from total disasater ? ( i realise this isnt going to happen just playing devils advocate)