>> This short-cut method of breeding the parent back to its own offspring is much less severe inbreeding than breeding siblings together since each parent only shares half the genes with their offspring. But siblings share 100% of the same genes and breeding them together may lead to deformities or abnormalicies. >>

...but I don't think this is actually true. In fact, I think the opposite (breeding offspring to parent) is statistically more dangerous. When outbreeding, you're trying to prevent "deleterious receissive alleles" from becoming expressed in the offspring. If one of the parents is a heterozygote for that deleterious trait, all of their offspring have a 50% chance of carrying it. When breeding back to a parent, that means you have a 100% het for deleterious trait breeding to a 50% het. Statistically, there is less of a chance of a sibling (50% chance for sib vs. 100% for parent) to be carrying that trait than the parent.

If you're trying to make albinos, one obviously would rather breed a 100% het to a 50% poss het than two 50% poss hets together. Same holds true for the undesirable traits as well...
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~Brian Ott

www.squamations.com

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