Thanks very excited about this one, I’ve seen this pastel enchi combo paired with other morphs and loved the results!
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When I get to the point where I am raising BP’S. I really won’t feel comfortable with breeding siblings together out of a clutch or breeding daughter to sire or son to mother.
I was always told this was not a good thing. No matter what kind of animal it is. So I myself would rather sell the babies from the clutch or trade with someone to get another BP that is not related to keep my project going.
I guess I am old school. I never did that with horses when I raised them. Some people would. Everyone has there own way of doing things. I just want my collection without inbred animals in it.
Is this going to be impossible to do and get the results that I want? I do not know. That is the question I will ask you guys. Will it be impossible?
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So long as you don’t discover a new gene, it won’t be. Only thing it could do is cost more in the long run. Not the worst thing given it will provide the healthiest stock for breeding.
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Well I didn’t think about discovering a new gene. That would be a hope i do, but hope I don’t. Would not know what to do with it. LOL, more questions to come on that.
I know I probably won’t ever make a lot of money raising BP’s. When I raised Horses I loved the babies. I’m getting older and can’t deal with the big horses and breaking them to ride anymore.
I discovered ball pythons, all the beautiful colored morphs. I found something that I could enjoy in my retirement years and can handle now that I am older. My brother bought me a Piebald BP for Christmas in 2019. 4 year old.
He is beautiful and very docile. I am doing all the research I can now so I can do the best I can when I start buying more BP’s and breeding them.
Not to make a bunch of money.
Just for the love of the animals. If I make some money, thats ok too.
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That’s so awesome!!! What a nice retirement hobby!!!
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You are making my point.
Yes, you may have a snake that dens in the same location. Ecological studies have shown us that by and large it is the females that establish den sites. So we have a denned female that you observe every year, is she breeding with the exact same male every year? And is that male her brother/father/son? No and no. The males of the species tend to be more travel prone because they move around a lot trying to find females to breed. So she is going to be seeing a new male each year.
Next question - Are all of the babies she produced every year also denning with her? No, because the carrying capacity of the area is really only sufficient to support a single adult animal. The babies may hang around for a part of the season because their prey specificity is not in competition with the female, but eventually they will have to move on because they cannot compete with her and each other. So they begin to travel outward to find their own territory/range/den.
Next question - What are the odds that the territory immediately next door is going to be openly available and not already inhabited by another adult, established animal? Probably pretty low. So the babies have to keep on moving until they find an open territory. Odds are that open territory is going to be rather distal from the mother’s denning site.
Even if the most immediately proximal territory is available however, revisit what I mentioned above about males being roamers. Males are not likely to be establishing any set den site, instead, they will essentially behave as a vagabond; traveling along looking for the best opportunity to eat and (once old enough) mate where and when they can but never actually settling down. By the time the males reach sexual maturity (1-2 seasons) they will have traveled some distance from their mother’s den site and (because snakes are not social pack animals) they will also be distanced from their siblings. You also have to account for the fact that the males reach sexual maturity faster than the females. So even if the male is proximal to one of his sisters when he reachs sexual maturity, he still will not be able to breed with her. And by the time she has reached sexual maturity and found a den site of her own, the male will have moved along in his own travels.
Add clutch attrition into the equation. High probability that only 1-2 animals in the clutch will even make it to sexual maturity
Can you honestly say that, even under this simplified accounting, when you combine all of these factors it is realistic that inbreeding is occurring at high levels in nature?
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Yes, there are many thousands of unrelated animals mating together in a small area. As a related analogy - if I stuck you and your sister together in a pitch black room with 1998 other strangers for a blind dance contest, what are the odds you would accidentally happen to pair up with her?
So again, low chance of inbreeding
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I work with Black Gaps so I know all the fun of locality alterna. But, you are conflating the captive population with no account of the ecological range. How much area makes up the entire range of the Black Gap locale? How many animals are inside of that locale? How likely is it that any two given random animals from within that locale are directly related to one another?
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Yes, to maintain the specific traits the line was selectively bred to have, you cannot outcross because of the potential to lose those traits. However, that does not mean those lines are perfectly fit and do not have issues unrelated to the specific traits they were bred for.
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With all due respect Dr Wyman this analogy has been edited so that it no longer is in a little poor taste.
Fixed it for you.
Well if it was referring to my sister I wouldn’t be very happy with the analogy. Was not trying to offend you in any way.
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Was not offended. Originally I was trying to stick to the whole inbreeding topic so… you know… Brother/sister pairing is closer than brother + sister dancing.
Was not trying for poor taste but I was worried it might have skated too close to the edge for some people (which was why I put the PG-13 caveat in there)
Mr. Wyman
I know there are incubation issues sometimes and it causes deformities in BP’s. I have seen videos of hatchling’s having what they call shark mouth, have no eyes and kinking down their back. It is really ashame that these poor babies have to be like this. Is this only incubation issue’s?
Can some of this be inbreeding issue’s?
Shark mouth and kinking can come from incubation issues, inbreeding, or congenital issues, really depends on the situation to know however.
If you have multiple clutches in the incubator together and they all get it, then it is probably incubation related. If it is only a single clutch out of multiples in the incubator and the parents are related to one another… Probably looking at inbreeding/congenital issue
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I understand. I hope I never have any issues like that. But, from what I have been reading it probably will at some point. Thank you
Thank you for breaking this down and clarifying, I kept hearing things about inbreeding from Youtube breeders that were the opposite of what I learned in school and was getting confused.
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That was an intensely intelligent way to express this topic with very valid reasoning.
I enjoyed reading that very much, and it does have me thinking about the wild arguments towards inbreeding.
I do have one question tho regarding this statement, which is not connected to the inbreeding topic at hand.
Due to Ball Pythons low fecundity, wouldn’t that suggest their offspring of any given clutch has a higher rate of survival? Low fecundity is a sign that particular species does not need to reproduce in large numbers because more survive to adulthood.
So instead of 1-2 animals making it to sexual maturity, wouldn’t the estimated number be closer to 4-5, say out of a clutch of 10?
Or am I way off?
Two answers for you here: No, but also, yes (clear as mud right? LOL)
So, the lower fecundity we see in balls is more in captive balls versus wild balls. Wild ball pythons, by and large, tend to produce larger clutches than what we typically see in captivity. This is one of the unintended consequences of the hobby where in we have inadvertently been selecting for females that breed sooner. Inevitably those females are smaller and, as such, cannot produce large clutches (a 2500g female has more room in her body to nurture 10 eggs better than a 1200g female)
That said, yes, the odds of one of their offspring making it to maturity are higher, but that is why their clutches are smaller than some comparable species of the same size/stature. I am grossly over-simplifying this statement but, evolution has kind of landed at the breeding strategy wherein a species, in a sort of checks/balances way, invests the minimum amount of energy/time/effort/production necessary so as to produce the minimum number of offspring necessary in order to ensure one copy of their genome survives.
- A female that uses all of her energy reserves to produce a 25 egg clutch ends up not having sufficient energy left to coil her eggs and dies while nesting them. Her dead body begins to rot and attracts scavengers that eat her remains and also the clutch. Her genes are now erased from the population.
- A female that uses hardly any of her energy reserves to produce a 3 egg clutch ends up successfully incubating her clutch, but natural attrition results in none of the offspring surviving to maturity. Her genes are now erased from the population.
- A female devotes enough of her energy reserves to produce a 7 egg clutch and make it through the incubation somewhat weakened but generally healthy. Natural attrition results in 1-2 of the offspring surviving to maturity. Her genes are sustained in the population and continue to be passed along.
Make sense?
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That actually makes perfect sense. I wasn’t aware that wild females would produce larger clutches, I thought it would be the opposite due to the amount of food readily available in captivity.
Thank you Dr. Wyman.
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But this is something else that comes with huge changes depending on certain factors.
In captivity, we feed ~ once a week (Ive recently changed from every 10 → 14 days).
This is my uneducated thoughts-
In the wild they search for burrows, block the way out and eat as many as they can before they escape. They are likely getting 3/4 times as much per meal. Now it might be less frequent but that only helps to increase the amount of weight their body will hold on to.
Their internals know that they might go without food for a little while and stores everything it can (where as our snakes might be able to assume they will be fed regularly and not have the need to store as much). Add in the fact that they are not climbing trees all day and spend most of the time either still or slowly moving, they aren’t burning much off.
Also the rodents in the wild are eating anything and everything, grass, seeds, MEAT, hair, bones… hell, even each other if needs be. The snakes are getting much richer and varied diets through wild rodents.
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But how do we take advantage of the amount of food available in captivity?
By pushing as hard as we can to get the females to reach that imposed minimum weight to breed so that we can breed them as soon as they hit it. And then, because as soon as they hit that size we breed them and, in doing so, cause a massive energy deprivation to their system that stunts their growth/productivity.
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Very true. I don’t breed any of my balls until they hit at least 3yrs old, not dependent on weight or even if they can breed earlier. I’ve even waited till 4 years because I just don’t see the benefits of breeding them early.
But I did forget to take into account that most breeders want to breed as early as possible, and there are definitely side affects to that.
Again that makes a lot of sense to the difference in adult females in the wild and adult females in captivity, despite if they get food more regularly or not.
Thanks for always taking the time to make sense of these situations.
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