Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I know I'm a couple of year from mating. Would I be able to mat my cal/king with another cal/king that have the same father? Different mother but same father. Would that cause a problem for offspring. Heard from one source the it would not, as long as you don't do it over and over again. Just needing some second opinions.

You should be fine. Its true its not a great idea to keep breeding numerous generations of siblings when possible, but there are some species in the trade that originate from very few wild stock parents.

You should not have any problems with THAT particular aspect whatsoever. But in any case, there is TONS of "line-breeding"(i.e. inbreeding) that is constantly done throughout the hobby all the time, and actually HAS to be done to achieve certain goals. And you HAVE to do a certain amount of it to establish certain morphs, or progressively enhance certain selective traits you are looking for.

It is usually only when it is done with siblings over and over again constantly that it tends to bring undesireable "like" traits to negatively affect the animal....e.g. lack of vigor, deformities, and a plethora of other things that are genetic that you cannot even begin to see from just looking at the snake. Even different types of "lethal" genes can leave a snake deformed inside the egg never to develop and hatch at all because it was genetically aborted from certain genes failing miserably very early on as well.

Many would most likely automatically suspect it was something they had to have done wrong in the incubation process, and certainly this happens very often without a doubt too, but I am sure a smaller portion of these occurrences happen now and then from certain bloodlines of snakes being bred together constantly and things going wrong within the egg itself.

The "bug-eyed" trait in leucistic Texas Rat's is a prime example of a non-desireable "tandem" trait that goes hand-n-hand with certain bloodlines that gets expressed quite often and is likely due to them constantly being in-bred long ago to produce as many as possible into the market, instead of early on introducing new blood from good "normal" stock to help eliminate that problem early on.

In any case, these are just a couple examples of what "can" happen when it is CONSTANTLY done, but with that half-sib breeding you are thinking about doing should work just fine all things being equal.

Good luck!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Thanks to all for the great info and comments. Doug, in your first paragraph, you talk about Achieving Goals, Establishing certain Morphs, Enhancing certain selective Traits. Sounds like you have to be a geneticist. How do you learn to do that? Can you learn it from books or is it a hit and miss that comes with long term experience?

Well, you certainly don't have to be a geneticist, but a pretty good basic understanding about how genes work are a huge plus to make things work much easier and efficiently to your benefit, otherwise most of it will definitely be "hit-or-miss" if you don't understand what is going on with how the different inherited traits are produced.

As you said, books are EXTREMELY useful in understanding the basics of how genes work. And there is an endless supply of useful information on basic genetics and terminology throughout the net too. All you have to do is simply type some key words on a google-search like...."snake gentetics", and there will be countless hits to check out.

Lots of people are very intimidated by genetics at first, and think it is so complicated there isn't any use even trying to understand it, but I assure you, this is not the case at all.

Once you start grasping the basic fundamentals of what different genes are responsible for, and what they are properly termed, alot of it is extremely easy to figure out afterwards. Of course there are other aspects that are extremely puzzling and will probably never be fully understood at all. But that is far from the many simple basic things that ARE understood well now, and things you can EASILY apply to most ALL the common color and pattern morphs you see today.

Good luck getting a handle on the basics, it ain't no rocket science for sure!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

www.supersnakes.com/gwiz.htm
A fun tool for snake breeders.
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Bob/Chris
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire

Sweet link thanks
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BigT
There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity. The ignorant can be taught, stupidity is beyond our control.
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