Breeding pair questions

[whistlepig]

Still new to the snake thing, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. However, the issue of inbreeding came up earlier in eminart's Loki thread, which is the second time I've seen the issue come up in a relatively short time. I didn't want to hijack the Loki thread, so I figured I'd post my questions here. It got me wondering, do snake breeders mostly only cross snakes that they own themselves? Is there a mechanism in place where people can pair up their individual snakes just to breed? Is this something that is unappealing to people interesting in breeding? Seems like it would help from a genetic diversity perspective or is the problem that some species just do not have enough cb individuals that it would matter?

[Aaron_S]

I am not sure I understand the question.

Do you mean that person A has one snake and person B has one snake of the opposite gender. So they know each other/find each other/whatever and they do a joint breeding project? Is that your question?

I can tell you that yes sometimes joint breeding projects happen even between breeders. I also know a lot of breeders who find different bloodlines and stock to keep them as diverse as possible.

Some species just don't have that option because there's no wild caught blood coming in. For example ball pythons used to be imported by the thousands from Africa so there was always new blood coming into the hobby. Whereas carpet pythons can't be imported legally so it's a little more muddled when it comes to them.

The other part is how do you know you even got different stock from buying from two different breeders? Person A can produce 12 animals from a single pair. Person B and C buy a pair each and breed them too.
Person D comes along and says "I want to diversify." So they buy from Person B and C one each. Both animals came from the same blood lines and are related. You have to do some research into things or work with wild caught animals.

It's also not as big of a problem in the snake world as it is in other worlds breeding closely related animals in the first couple generations.

[whistlepig]

Thanks! That's what I was looking for.