Breeding Snakes

[SnakeWrangler]

Hi everyone,

Just have a couple of questions about breeding, I am not even close to doing this yet but when I get my first two snakes I want them to be a pair that can one day in a few years breed.

1) What are the pros and cons of breeding two related snakes?
2) What are the pros and cons of breeding two unrelated snakes?

I need to know so that I can decided on buying two snakes from the same person at the same time or looking for two different snakes from two different people.

Also, at what age do snakes generally become active breeders? Please specify for male and female.

Thanks.

[Simon_Archibald]

I've had this discussion with Bob Withey and he thinks there's no problem with breeding related reptiles. Examples of this he pointed out were reptiles that had been existing on islands near the Hawkesbury River for many many generations.

Also, my breeding pair of Painted Dragons are related and offspring is fine.

Simon Archibald

[stockeh]

count the fingers ant toes though... if you look carefully i bet there are six on each foot/hand
:-)

the advantage of breeding related pairs is that they become great banjo players, but the disadvantage is that they may get mistaken for tasmanians

[Simon_Archibald]

Originally Posted by stockeh

count the fingers ant toes though... if you look carefully i bet there are six on each foot/hand
:-)

the advantage of breeding related pairs is that they become great banjo players, but the disadvantage is that they may get mistaken for tasmanians

Hehe. We have a whole coupla suburbs devoted to these people here in Newcastle. Namely Windale, Mayfield (some areas are good and bad, depending), Cessnock, need I go on.

Simon Archibald

[dobermanmick]

Just have a couple of questions about breeding, I am not even close to doing this yet but when I get my first two snakes I want them to be a pair that can one day in a few years breed.

1) What are the pros and cons of breeding two related snakes?

thats a good question i have been thinking the same thing it would make it a lot easier and a bit cheaper on frieght if you can do it !

[NoOne]

Breeding related reptiles doesn't appear to cause any problems, it's often a good way to inprove colors.
Saying that i wouldn't line breed any further than 1st generation, sibling to sibling or sibling to parent but thats just me, there plenty of other people that do it with out problems and they produce some great snakes.

[Fuscus]

Line Breeding (2 or more generations) is the way to fix color traits, but if you do it expect to cull some animals. The populations that Simon mentioned would be subject to intense evolutionary pressure, anything slightly slower or less agile would be bumped off pretty quickly.
On thing you must ask is that were the parents of the animals related, you might be only breeding siblings once, but the breeder of the parents might have done the same as (maybe) do the breeder of the grandparents.