Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was at a reptile store here in columbus, ohio. The guy selling bearded dragons said that there was never a risk of inbreeding bearded dragons. Anyone know of any truth to this? Or was he just wrong.....

Thanks!!!

That's not true. They can inbreed. They don't know who they're related to.

Birth defects are very common amongst inbred animals. Clutch mates bred with clutch mates, or bred with parents. It is getting extremely hard, and unsafe due to people making up names for certain crossings. They might mate two red flamesxsandfire together and call their offspring "SUPER BLOOD REDS," or a light dragon from the same clutch and name it some other creative name not realizing that the customer might breed it to another red flame and end up inbreeding.

Hi
in some books i have i have a part about inbreeding then you get weird growing tails r even no tails atall.
and some more other things i not remember now.
i wil read it an typ it inhere later !!
byeeeeee

Thanks guys....I was pretty sure, but for some reason he said bearded dragons were different.....

Ordinarily, 'a little inbreeding' in reptiles doesn't really affect them all that much, they're not exactly the most highly evloved creatures on the planet. For the most part, many of the patterns and colors you see in reptiles were "developed" through inbreeding, (similar to all the different dog and cat breeds you see out there...)
The problem with dragons, is that in this country - you have to remember that there were really only two sources from the start -and the vast majority of the dragons available in this country stem from those animals. Threre aren't exactly a lot of w/c beardeds comming into this country to add to the gene pool.

Additionally, in an attempt to make a lot of "fancy dragons" fast - a LOT of people inbred dragons, (and continue to do so, unfortunately.) Sure you'll get "screaming" color right out of the egg and then some; (big hint right there) but you also might get things like kinked tails, knots along the back, and other anomolies. Dragons with leg deformities, or those that 'walk on their wrists' are also most likely inbred for certain traits or color characteristics. Sometimes these little 'extras' don't make themselves apparent until months later, long after purchase.
Nature has it's mishaps, if your dragon is kind of runty and doesn't do well even under the best care - that doesn't necessarily mean he's inbred... but you have to consider the source. Always.
(:
Liz

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Breeding father to daughter or son to mother was a common practice in the United States and accepted by many professionals. Since then several more generations have hatched and most breeders now admit that the size and overall health of their beardies of the last 5 years has gone downhill a lot.

Some are making a serious attempt to outcross animals now and watching their breeding lines closer. Others are bringing in bearded dragons from the Netherlands(where the original breeding groups started out), England and Germany(who paid closer attention to the parentage than we have) to diversify them further.

We certainly have the most colorful dragons in the world now, so maybe we all should start working seriously on the health and vigor of them and be more selective in which ones we do bred and produce offspring.

The original gene pool of vitticeps was much larger than many people think, I have heard people say 6-7 dragon, but there were over 300, thought to be unrelated brought into the Netherlands in the 70's and another large group after that, which ended up in England and Germany, so there is a good base there to work from.

The problems we are seeing now in genetics stem from just a few large breeders that did mass produce and sell offspring, which in turn are being breed to related dragons, many case the owners not knowing it. Or in people trying to make a desirable genetic defect (dysfunctional thought) and getting ones they did not want and selling those failures off.

There are enough quality breeders that do really care about their animals and the babies they produce, if you want, you can find them online and here on KS..... I would suggest if someone can not tell you at least the previous two-three generations that you can verify, I would not purchase babies from them... and I would run away from anyone telling you they are breeding for albino's!