Olah amigos-amigas!
just wanna ask someone knows how to do the proper line breeding of Bearded Dragon. i’ve already read some, but i just wanna have more classification on this one. as i wanna do line breeding, enhance the color of my goal, and establish my own line. its my dream eversince then. and i’m going to start this long term project as soon as i’m back in my country. now i’m gathering good not best yet recipe for my project.
hope someone can clarify proper line breeding of #bearded-dragons
If you search the forum for info on bearded dragons & inbreeding, you’ll find a lot of information that has already been posted. Inbreeding in general is a very hotly debated issue and there is no general consensus on how to do it or even if it should be done at all.
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Responsible line breeding takes a lot of thought and preparation. You’ll basically want to start with multiple breeding pairs or a couple females for each male. You’ll want to source each one so that they are as distantly related as possible or within reason. Depending what trait you want to hone in on, those parents may already express some of what you are aiming to get (color, pattern, etc). Every season you’ll keep what you consider to be the best of the offspring from each pair, grow those up, and research what is available from other breeders to add to your project to keep your genetics healthy. You will want to avoid breeding siblings and siblings back to parents as much as possible, as while immediate issues may not crop up, it can set up your line for major health issues in the future. Great lines are healthy first, beautiful second. You’ll want to keep good records on lineage.
In the years ahead it’s pretty much rinse and repeat. It’ll basically holding back the best and introducing new animals from time to time to keep the bloodline fresh. You’ll probably want to sell some original animals here and there when they no longer fit into your goal. One day you’ll be producing what you were aiming for in the beginning.
Line breeding is much more substantially expensive than just breeding recessive or dominant traits, so you’ll want to take that into consideration. You’ll likely not garner much profit at first due to needing to regularly purchase new animals to achieve your goal, but this also depends a lot on the market worth of the kind of animal you are working with.
As a final note you don’t have to inbreed to achieve line breeding. You see it a lot in the reptile world but there are quite a few examples of the major issues that crop up when you have small projects and not a lot of animals to work with (certain morphs of beauty snakes come to mind). So as mentioned before you definitely want to mitigate this wherever possible.
I haven’t done line breeding personally or anything, but this is just what I know from following other sources and reading up on it myself.
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hi hi!!! thank you so much! yes i’m doing proper research before starting this. into consideration, yah i can also say expensive, but most of the time i only do swapping/trading them (mostly snakes bp/tics)
next yahhh i had this goal of mine(thanks for reminding)
i’m not into rush also so i won’t fall into inbreeding.
i got time, patience, focus, etc on this one.
will do some outcross also.
yah inbreeding should not do specially in bd. responsible line breeding will do.
All of what you said hits the nail in the head. It’s very important to take into consideration that every bearded in captivity is related at this point, however distantly that may be. “Line” breeding for traits like color and pattern is much harder than working with mendelian genetics. Finding the balance between that screaming red animal and a healthy animal is a fine line that lately a lot of people are stepping over into negative results.
I would like to add that in any animal you choose to hold back, structure and health is just as important as color and saturation. Clutch health should also be taken into consideration. Did all the eggs hatch in a timely manner? Did the hatchlings hatch out uniform in size and not runty? Were there any birth defects? If these boxes are not checked, reflection must be done.
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