Inbreeding Bearded Dragons

Aussie Pythons & Snakes Forum

Help Support Aussie Pythons & Snakes Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.

gregcranston

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2007
Messages
840
Reaction score
1
Location
Mildura, Victoria, Australia
Below is some quoted conversation of a discussion on bearded dragon inbreeding that I have been having with another member, which we inadvertantly hijaked someone elses thread with. So I thought we should start our own thread with it and get some opinions from others.

gregcranston
(unless they are related and if so you may have to dispose of any eggs),

why would eggs from a related pair have to be disposed of ?:?

The obvious of course, the hatchlings will most probably be unhealthy and have genetic disorders caused by inbreeding. They would most probably be sterile and therefore no-one would want to buy them and in the worst case, they could have physical abnormalities.

I think you need to do a bit more research;). Breeding siblings and offspring back to parents has no more chance of producing young with defects than an unrelated pairing. You must continuely breed related animals(siblings ect) for approxamately several generations before the likely-hood of defects is increased.

You can't be serious, it is just basic genetics, inbreeding for even 1 generation will increase the chances of genetic problems in the offspring, its because siblings (or parents) will have similar heterozygous recessive genes and breeding them would highly increase the chances of some of the offspring from being homozygous for these genes and therefore have the disorder!

Sorry, it seems as though we have hijaked this thread, I think we should start a new thread on this topic.

We are talking about reptiles not humans. How can you seriously tell someon that if their related beardies produce eggs they should be thrown out. Sterile, abnormal offspring, what rubbish.
 
This will be my last post on this matter. Can you tell me how we get all these wonderfull colour phases in beardies, albino pythons and many other morphs. Why are say, albino olives and darwins so readily available now days.
 
mmmmmm was thinking that myself............inter breeding happens alot even in the human world not that i agree with human) but in dog worlds and cats reptiles etc ........i think you would really have to prove your theory gregcranston i am with hawke on this one ..............
 
Someone needs to do some research before making such statements. I have been inbreeding my Beardeds for 6 generations and nothing has happened yet. This is a common practice used by breeders around the world to acheive desired traits in reptiles, and if defects are to occur we haven't seen them yet.
 
inbreeding lowers fresh genetic makeup to only one line or similar genes from siblings etc. in the long run this does lead to weaker stock, so much that overseas the 'transulcent' lines needed desperately to be bred with different lines so that the stock could recover a strength.

we have seen examples were inbreeding leads to weaker and lack of animals. eg. leathers and silks. so its no surprise that mutations like in humans, can happen in animals. so its not just folk and fairytale..

although its estimated that clear and visible mutations usually happen after the 7th generation of inbreeding. this was told to me by big time breeders in the US, which have far more dragons to breed then us. you all say that we dont want to follow the yanks.. so why breed like them, your just being lazy.. there are plenty of colourful dragons out there to outsource.

you have to consider that your dragons may be siblings, were your breeders? an their breeder? etc. its common.

why? it just shows you don't care about your stock and produce.. just like breeding juveniles and underdeveloped females, under a year old.. ;)
 
i personally think any inbreeding is wrong i said this once on a glider thread
parks even state on the permit forms that its not allowed
and its for a reason

everyone has there own opinions tho
 
hmm...POP CORN!!!
1st... i do not see my personal need for direct sibling breeding
but i see benefits either way.......with stamping lines
but their are concerns,in the longterm outcome.... if it is not looked into properly with health

no i dont know enough about "technical" terms...but my experience tells me
that its not to go into lightly
d/l


Kirby... i dont know the technical..names for stuff
but what you said doesn't cover in snakes.........
why would established Aust. known..world wide breeders...
chance the demise of their own stock?...its not about not caring...!
they just understand more than you
not saying your statement is wrong....but one sided..
pls dont take offense!;)
 
Last edited:
Interbreeding is just amplifieing all the same characteristics over and over, almost producing colones of each other, but if there is history of say bone problems within the family of animals, deformities only occur when the gene is dominant in both animals that are bred. So interbreeding is used by professionals in the sense of rejecting any offspring or parents that have any undesirable health problems, and focus on interbreeding two animals that are 'perfect' where they dont carry any genes for health problems, discovering these 'perfect' animals is a long process with lots of failures along the way.
On the evolutionary scale, new blood is required to ensure there is a wide variety of immunity, so that if a disease broke out it wouldnt wipe out the whole species in one go. There would be those selective few that have just the right genetics to be immune. Interbreeding means all the animals that are born are the same, so if a sickness affects one more than average they are all susceptable and will most probably perish.
Interbreeding is used to incorage genetic mutations to a extent so that you get backfires of albinos and specific colourations and other disorders which would wipe the animal out if it were living in the wild. So to preserve the other natural characteristics - but humans force it to happen so there is a bigger variety of rarer animals for the pet trade.
Dogs are the biggest example of interbreeding for characteristics. Every dog on the planet has stemmed from the one species - which is why all breeds of dog can produce fertile offspring.
From carefull selection of offspring and interbreeding for mutations we end up with all those really exceptional breeds such as the bulldog and chihuahuas and greyhounds etc. Which are -nothing- like their wild counterparts, therefore in the wild today most would perish, although there are exceptions, but most wild dogs that thrive on their own without any human interaction are the breeds still similar to the wild dog, with large jaws and short fur etc, like the dingo.

Point was, interbreeding may be completly fine to do for many many generations, but also could make problems within first generation. So its a game of chance.
Breeding unrelated pairs are capable of have double genes of a genetic problem too, but interbreeding is in a sense- using every card in the pack, just a matter of getting a good hand in a random pick.

Thats what Ive learnt anyways
 
Just out of interest if inbreeding in reptiles is detrimental how come a species like Rough Scaled Pythons has managed to survive in such a small region in relatively low numbers (as far as research has shown) without dying off??? I know there is a possibility that there are other populations out there but i'm pretty sure a few research studies have looked into its distribution and only located the 1 gorge that has them, meaning that they would in all likely hood have been inbreeding for generations...

And i don't think mammal genetics are the best example when talking about reptiles....

Ben
 
Reptile genetics are totally different to mamalian genetics ,
if your interested in learning more buy some books and get educated .
my 2 cents
 
What about all the Island populations of Tiger snakes?
Inbreeding certainly hasnt hurt them.
You cant compare mammals to reptiles at all.
 
Last edited:
The rough-scaled and tigers are probably so isolated that there are no diseases to challenge their genetics. Any deformities would die soon after birth anyway.
 
It really makes me laugh how some people think inbreeding reptiles is so evil.
Just about every captive bred reptile in this country has been inbred somewhere along the line. The vast majority of captive bred reptiles have been inbred just about every generation. Some people are so naive.
 
Kirby... i dont know the technical..names for stuff
but what you said doesn't cover in snakes.........
why would established Aust. known..world wide breeders...
chance the demise of their own stock?...its not about not caring...!
they just understand more than you
not saying your statement is wrong....but one sided..
pls dont take offense!;)

the thread is titled 'inbreeding bearded dragons'... not, 'inbreeding snakes'

vincent, we are all aware somewhere along the line our animals were probably inbred, why cant we try not to repeat past mistakes?

there is no need, you can do everything that inbreeding dose by outsourcing, its only that inbreeding is cheap, easy and quick.
 
i cant imagine why the dragons in the US are so weak and full of probs in inbreeding doesnt harm them after a while.

people say u can inbreed for something like 7 generations with no probs, but if its not necessary, why do it?

i think its always better to get some fresh blood in there if possible, just to avoid doubling up on any weaknesses that may be present, theres so many nice colours available inbreeding for colour is no longer necessary.
 
vincent, we are all aware somewhere along the line our animals were probably inbred, why cant we try not to repeat past mistakes?

It's not a mistake. It's fully intentional , for valid reasons. The Authorities would have to allow collecting from the wild in all states if we all made the decision not to inbreed.
There's simply not enough different bloodlines available for your fantasy to work.
Thats fact.
 
What about all the pure dog and cats and cows and pigs etc etc
they were all created by man by inbreeding ,
now stop this BS and get educated ,
 
as long as it isnt done to many times before new genetics are introduced there is no problem. it would be absolutely absurd to say inbreeding in wild reptiles or any animal for that matter isnt common.
 
Those of you that say line breeding or inbreeding is the wrong thing to do, need to get there facts straight.Just because they are bred back to a sibling or parent don't mean they will be defective,infertile,deformed etc. Generally most of the reptiles you are buying are line bred to get the desired colours or traits.As Bigguy pointed out, 5th and 6th gen line bred animals don't show any form of defects,weakness etc so it's all just another load of reptile world BS.Last but not least,comparing what we do here in Oz to the yanks and there probs is an insult to the Aussie herp trade.WE ARE NOT AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top