Posted by:
Rextiles
at Sat Aug 21 15:30:10 2010 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Rextiles ]
You bring up some good points... My thinking is that the two are different... They may look similar and in some cases the same but they my very well be incompatible... In other species that I have worked with like leopard geckos and boas, there are more than one strain of albino and the different strains are not compatible... They look the same but they are indeed different...
This may very well be the case between these two animals, but until breeding trials have taken place to prove or disprove any compatibilities, we won't know for sure.
Here is the down side I see if the two are test bred to eachother... You will be creating double hets for traits that are very similar to eachother...If the double hets are then bred back to eachother, how will the seller and potential buyer know what is what being that they are so similar looking especially as hatchlings???
Just something to think about as it could cause a lot of confusion and mislabeling...
Well, you are looking at this from merely one perspective, that all offspring will always be sold or are saleable. See, I'm not looking at it from that perspective.
OK, let's say that all of the offspring are double het now, why would anybody want to sell those anyways? First off, who knows what they would produce? A good breeder of a scientific mind would take at least a pair and give it a shot to see what they might produce. Perhaps you would get a mish-mash of who knows what that is near impossible to tell apart. That outcome is very possible. But you will have learned two very important things, whether both lines are compatible or not and whether the black speckling is a determinate of a Toffee. A project like this would take many years to prove out but one that would be invaluable to understanding so much more about the Toffee genetics.
What do you do with the rest of the stock that you don't use? Well, there's a simple and ethical although unpopular method used in science, you simply cull them. I know that in today's world, especially in this reptile market, that people see dollar signs on every single thing they produce and that's fine to a degree, but some things are worth the time and energy to put into if even just to learn more about the animals and genetics we're working with.  ----- Troy Rexroth Rextiles

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