Are these okeetee or normals?

The normal I have is female as well as the fire. The amel is male and the other adults haven’t been sexed the person said they were mostly male but he also said he might be able to sex them for me before I get them.

I would probably breed the fire to the snow. That way, you’re at least guaranteed amel babies, but you can also test the fire for an anery het and test the snow for a diffused het.

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I already know that the fire is het for anery so at best I should produce some snows

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Would any others make a good pair?

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The fire and the amel or the fire and the charcoal, possibly. Without knowing hets, ‘good’ pairings are hard to suggest. But if you want to get into a longer term breeding project, you can always hold back babies that will have known hets from the parents and breed them down the line.

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Ok thanks I think I’ll pair the fire with the snow and then try to produce some avalanches in the future but I’m not too sure about the rest of them. Besides that pairing there would still be 2 amels the normals and the charcoal.

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It’s hard to plan without knowing hets, but there are a whole lot of corns who are het for a fair number of reasonably common things. It’s almost a sure bet that your new ones will have hets, just not sure if they’ll match. I concur with Olivia’s suggestion as a starting point.

I also recommend a longer term plan. You should dig into researching what the potential combos of your visuals would look like and plan at least two or three generations. If you want to add another visual trait, have a plan and look for an individual you can’t resist. Your normals can be valuable for outcrossing. They’re also virtually sure to have at least a few matching hets to some of the others, though these may not appear with the first partner.

Gonna be exciting!

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Thanks for all the help I’ll make sure to hold back a few from that clutch then. From the I could possibly produce some more fire pieds in the future or some avalanches. Can you breed the siblings together if so I could breed the normals together to see what they are het for?

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You’ll get a variety of answers to this, and I encourage you to search through the topic here. All recessive morphs were originally produced by varying degrees of line breeding and/or inbreeding (different people define those terms differently). These practices can concentrate desirable traits. They can also concentrate undesirable ones. It has been practiced in virtually every species where humans are involved in animal husbandry, with beneficial and negative results.

The “Cliff Notes” summary of every from Amel to Zigzag goes like this; an unusual, attractive trait popped up, and the relatives of that animal were bred to one another in an effort to figure out what caused the trait and to produce more animals who had it. Sometimes these efforts were successful and a new “morph” such as Amel was born. Sometimes it was determined that a trait didn’t breed true, but did appear to run in family lines, as with Zigzag. Sometimes it was more complicated, as with Bloodred or the Hypo complex. But it always began the same way.

Those are facts. My opinion is that line breeding/ inbreeding is all right with caveats. To state the obvious, no animal with any questionable characteristics - I don’t mean questioning if it carries a het - should ever be bred regardless of mate chosen. If line breeding is done, it should be for a small number of crosses. Once multiple target individuals exist, start outcrossing. And if ANY animals produced by line breeding are defective in any way, that’s the end of that line. No breeding of any of those babies, not even the ones who don’t have a problem, no repeating that cross. If the problem was serious, say multiple seriously kinked babies in a clutch which was properly incubated, I would consider test breeding the parents to new, unrelated bloodlines but only if it was a very desirable trait.

As for breeding your unrelated normals to check hets, yes of course you can do that. If you choose to, you’ll probably find that they have a het or two in common. Most in the hobby now who didn’t recently come from wild blood carry some common hets. If you choose to, remember that you’ll produce a lot of normal babies with unknown hets. Be sure you can keep or responsibly rehome them before you decide to bring them into existence.

That’s a brief summary of an extensively discussed topic, though simultaneously it is a long-winded reply to a short question. I guess it’s the old teacher in me. :woman_teacher:

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Ah ok thanks for all of the help.

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Would it be the same thing when breeding the babies with the parents?

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It would. That’s a usual step, in fact.

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Ok thanks so it should be fine as long as I dont breed any of the babies from clutches with kinks right?

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Basically, yes. I will qualify the reply by saying that I mentioned kinks because they’re probably the most common problem. There are other unhappy possibilities., though none are likely and all are possible with any pairing. I’m not saying that to scare you. Just pointing out that bad things can happen, though they usually don’t. If one chooses to breed, one has to be ready for all possibilities.

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Ok then thanks for all of the help

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For when I do start breeding next year when would be the best time to increase feeding and pair them?

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You’re welcome. The community is always happy to share our experiences and what we’ve learned. That’s a huge part of why I love this community.

Once you decide to breed your adults, your next step is deciding about brumation as that will shift your timing to some degree. That decision depends on part on where you live and how easy it is to cool your snakes. They do fine without brumation, they do fine with it.

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Ok thanks I already know the timing for brumation being around december-March but it’s very mixed in whether it’s required or not so as it’s my first time I’m not sure if I should brumate or not. I’m also not too sure on the timings on when to start to increase their food or when to pair. I’m sorry if I’m asking too many questions I just want to make sure I’ll be doing everything right.

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People learn by asking questions, no worries. Most people begin to increase feed shortly after Christmas. You can try pairing them anytime they’re in fit condition. They will mate when they’re ready. Not trying to be snarky, it’s just true. Some are ready in February, others in June. Increasing light matters, too (photoperiod and intensity).

You should do some research here on brumation, breeding prep, feeding, etc. Plenty of good info and wisdom.

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Thanks but dont you also have to wait for both the male and female to have their sheds too to know that they are ready to breed?

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