Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I will be breeding next season for the first time and have been writing down questions as i think of them and thought I'd go ahead and start collecting answers...lol

1)breed mother to son / father to daughter but NOT siblings?

2)What about siblings but from different clutches and/ or years?

3)1 male to 1 female OR 1 female multiple males OR 1 male for multiple females?

4)Do you remove the hides during breeding?

Hi, Sometimes you have no choice but to bred sibs. When you bred a parent to there offspring its called line breeding. It is common to do this. Whenever possible try to breed to unrelated animals, but its not always possible . Have fun breeding it's a blast. Claude

One male to one female. I would never put 2 recessive animals on one girl. I would however throw a dominant male and a recessive male on the same girl.

You could also throw 2 dominant males on the same female because you would easily be able to discern what animal sired the clutch.

You can breed 1 male to several females.

When I breed my snakes I take everything out of the tub. Water bowl hides......everything.
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blackrockcaptives.com

1)breed mother to son / father to daughter but NOT siblings?

Mother to son is line breeding and siblings breedings are OK but in general you want to breed unrelated animals. Like anything do it in moderation.

2)What about siblings but from different clutches and/ or years?

Same answer....same father pairs are better than same parent pairs but again it's really not a big deal.....as long as it's done in moderation. Continual inbreeding will cause problems.

3)1 male to 1 female OR 1 female multiple males OR 1 male for multiple females?

Do you mean in the same container? Or during the entire breeding season? 1 male to 1 female in a single container generally is what is done. BUT I will rotate multiple males through a single female depending on the genetics. If I'm going for something specific and the males are genetically the same OR if they are both co-doms or doms and I'm not picky about what comes out in the end (they will be visually different anyway). I personally would not however intermix males where I couldn't tell visually the difference between the offspring.

4)Do you remove the hides during breeding?

I remove hides but leave waterbowls.
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John Dague
Midwest Reptiles
www.mwreptiles.com

No matter what, when you breed something that is directly related to something else (mother-son, brother-sister, father-daughter, etc), then it is inbreeding.
However, inbreeding is not in and of itself a bad thing.

It's important to note that inbreeding does not *cause* bad genes - it just identifies where they are. So, when inbreeding is totally ignored and all a breeder does is breed unrelated animals, hidden undesirable genes just keep being passed around. Then, when the breeder DOES inbreed, ohmigawd bad genes! Inbreeding must be bad, then!

This is much more apparent when breeding mammals than reptiles, but it can still be applied to an extent. When your inbreeding results in undesirable characteristics, try to breed out those characteristics. This means that due to the long generation gap in ball pythons (about 3 years, average, for a baby (female) to be able to breed!) you're going to end up with a breeding plan that spans a couple decades.
Good dog breeders, or horse breeders, have breeding projects that they've been working on for years and have planned out for another twenty years.

The link I'm including with this is to a page talking about rat breeding, but the concepts about inbreeding are the same. It's a good site that's easy to understand, and will hopefully answer your questions more.

Just in case the blue link you can click doesn't pop up, here's the URL:
http://carawatha.tripod.com/inbreeding.htm

Hope some of that helps!

~jenny
Good info.

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