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Jeff (Boaphile),
My questions come after reading your post in "one eye genetics" thread dated 12/16/08.... see snip from that thread below.
In your post, you mentioned an albino x albino breeding, with only one good eye between them, producing mostly healthy babies.

I have two questions that I hope you can help me with.

1. Does adding "relation" into the mix add further complication? Meaning, using the Joel DuBay scenario, if those two breeders (with only one good eye) were related, would that add a greater chance of the babies having eye defects?

2. How likely is it that breeding related albinos will produce other problems such as kinks, weakness, etc?
I have been told that breeding albino x albino, even NOT related, will result in all these bad things including one-eyes.

The reason I ask is because I have 2 adult albinos that are related.....cousins, I think......that I would like to breed.
The male albino has both eyes, the female has one.

Is this a DOOMED pairing, or is there a reasonable chance of producing healthy albino babies?

I know this is long, but I hope you can help clear this up.
THANKS.

Tomsey

Boaphile quote:
"All that being said, in about 2003 Joel DuBay bred a female Albino that was born with both eyes bad, to an Albino male with one bad eye. That's right. Just one eye between them. She produced a litter of 23 babies with only two bad eyes in the lot. This is the exact same result that may very well occur using two perfect Albinos. I think that proves that the bad eye thing in Albinos, though something that does occur, and is certainly genetic due to it's relationship to the Albino lines, is not a genetic characteristic that works like Albinism or any desirable "mutation" that we are familiar with. In other words, an Albino with a bad eye seems to be no more likely to produce an Albino with a bad eye than an Albino with two good eyes."

Think of it this way. Every albino or het albino in this country has the same genes for color (either the Sharp imported or Kahl imported). Since nobody has done much with boa DNA sequencing it cannot be said with certainty that all the other genes, good or bad, are attached to the same chromosome(s) and are being passed along with the desireable color genes. But I would bet they are!

Thousands upon thousands of chances for undesireable mutations such as kinks, no eyes and who knows what else. In nature I am sure that siblings reproduce but no where as much as we boa breeders make it possible in captivity.

Just food for thought.

.......the two Albinos together and see what happens.
I will let you know how the experiment goes. No I won't.

Tomsey Bitago

(Pay it forward.....LOL)

Sounds like a plan. If the breeding turns out well, then you'll have your answer. At least, you'll have the answer for your pair. I'm sure results will differ from one pairing to another.

If it doesn't.... Then just don't repeat the breeding.

That's really the best you can do. Since nobody really has done any extensive breedings with the one/no eye Albinos, it's really hard to know for sure if and/or how often the defect will be passed on.

I've seen a few different snakes born with one or no eyes. "None" of them had the "albino gene" in the mix. I've seen burmese pythons, kingsnakes, cornsnakes, and 2 ball pythons with either 1 or both eyes missing. Of course, these are all egg layers. It could be the missing eyes was a temperature problem during incubation.

Since, in reality, "all" albinos are related.... It's really impossible to get unrelated pairs. OK, all Kahls are related to each other and all Sharps are related to each other. So, within each strain, "all" albinos are related to each other.

I hope you get a GREAT LITTER from your pair.