serious questions about albino inbreeding!..more

[Konstriktor]

ok im purchasing a pair of 100%hets,and breeding them together, get about 1/3 albino babys
i was told i cant breed the albino babys to eatchother or to there parents because it will cause deformities and problems is there truth in that???
all the info i can get would be help full thank you

[Sojourn]

Hello,
I posted this reply to a thread started by Bill in the care section... You were asking basically the same question so, long story short, copy and paste are my friends. I suggest for the best answers to questions like this, you really need to go to the sources of where the bloodline started. Simply because these people have more experience with them than anyone else. Here is what I have learned in my endeavors to have these questions answered, qouted from my other post......

"Some of the breeders I have spoken with on this subject, more exactly about the "flaws" in general that seem to express themselves in some Kahl strain albino babies(one-eyed syndrome, or blind in one eye, and weak central nervous systems causing them to not have very good control of their movements, and more...), give a general concensus that these birth defects have a MUCH higher propensity to come from albino to albino sibling breeding. And that the other ways one could go about producing albino's(het x het, het x albino), related or not, are much less likely to produce babies with this (IMO) definately genetic defect. But it does NOT completely rule them out.

Personally I am making it a point to keep my future breeders as unrelated as possible!

And on the flip side of the depressing paragraph I started out with. I have also been told that in general, albino babies are very healthy and hearty, and the birth defects are exceptions, and NOT the norm.

My two cents on what causes this goes all the way to the first few breedings that produced the original albinos which all have descended from since. There was some INTENSE inbreeding going on there! I think it started then, and has been passed down as sort of a shadow gene that seems to be triggered by inbreeding(most of the time).

I am no expert, but have interrogated several who are at length about this. I hope this helps you some! And if not, just drop Pete Kahl Reptiles an e-mail. I'm sure they would be happy to answer any question you might have...

Take care,
.....Jesse"

....VPI.com is also a great place to check...