Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm inquiring about matting BCI's. I have recently purchased a beautiful albino het Snow, Could've gotten his sister also, but didn't because I want to breed. My question is can you mate siblings together without risk of degenerative genetics. ie. deformation and such like most living things? I know stupid question!

Your albino was was produced by inbreeding. It is how oddball traits are reproduced when they are first found; thus all compatable albino's are somewhat related. This is why Sharp and Kahl albino's are not compatable. They are two different genetic mutations; both causing albinism, but reproduced in two different family trees.

With all this said, it is a good idea to bring in "out-stock" to breeding projects to widen the genetic diversity. So while you could have bred your snake with it's sister, it is not a bad thing to have passed on that opportunity. Breed your snake with a normal BCI to produce 100% heterozygous offspring. Then by inbreeding once, with these het's to the albino father, you will produce some albino's and some possible het's (66% I believe).

Make sense?

Ian

Thank you Ian, yes makes sense. As you can tell I'm new at this, but I definitely don't want to create unhealthy animals.

I have another question for you, if I were to breed the way you suggested, how do I know which beauties are het's?

When pairing an albino with a normal on the first breeding you will get all hets. With the second breeding of albino to het, you will get on average 50% albino and 50% hets, and no normals will be produced..

The only way to produce 66% possible hets is with a het to het breeding which will also give the odds of 25% albino in the litter as well. Of the average 75% of this litter that look normal, you will not know which of them are het or normal.

Kelly