Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I recently acquired three tick/mite/parasite infested wild captures when the person told me they were three adult females. I won't go into that story again although I am taking them to the vet tomorrow...

A fellow herper told me that I now have new bloodlines and that could be a good thing. I never asked him what he meant by that so I pose this question to the group as I'm sure other people have the same question.

My thoughts are that if I already have captive bred, simply buying another captive bred from a breeder would be a "new bloodline" for my future breeding projects.

I welcome your thoughts.

To my understanding, many a new morph have been discovered from wild caughts who were "hiding" recessive traits. If you had captive bred balls, you can be pretty sure that if it had been in captivity for a few generations that there probably isn't any hidden trait. With a wild caught, you potentially have a genetics grab bag: you have no idea what could be hiding. I believe that this is why so many people snatch up wild caught females who are gravid because then you also have babies of an unknown father. The other issue is just that with all the inbreeding that is done with these animals in the attempt to find new genes, there is a high probability (at least higher) that CB animals have a more limited gene pool than wild caught. Genetic diversity is a good thing.

IMO,
nate.

that is true you don't know what bred the females you could get lucky on the other hand now you have a fresh import to deal with that may not feed for you then what happens to her?

I don’t know if it’s so bad dealing with imports. I have not had a bad problem with getting them to feed. They are and so far still very shy other then that it’s not to bad. Now for a new person doing it ,could be a little harder. It gets frustrating sometimes but out of lets say 20 wc females I only have had one not feed and die.

James W. Arnold

Well when ever i refer to someone having a "new bloodline" I think of it as an addition to the genetic diversity of the species. So usually when i think of new blood I think of WC/imported animals that have not been breed in captivity, and they have an open book as far as genetic inheritance is concerned. You never know what you will be getting; it’s just like a huge grab bag of genetic diversity.... Anyways just my two cents..! Hope it helps you!

Sincerely,
Rose Hipskind
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www.srsnakes.com

Quite simply,

Any new snake will add new blood to your breeding project. The WC balls add new bloodlines to the entire Ball Python domestic breeding ring.
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-Iman

2.0 Balls (Spot and Speck)
0.1 Colombian BCI (Belle)
1.0 Colombian Rainbow (Rex)

Loving to Learn
Learning to Help
Helping to Love

Good point.

Sure there are probably a few lines out there that are multi generation captive bred on all branches but for the most part I would think the vast majority of captive bred ball pythons have at least one wild bred ancestor at as recently as grandparent. It's good to think ahead to avoid inbreeding but I don't think it's much of a problem yet due to the huge number of imported balls.