can i c some purple tiger morph pics please?!

im not picking him up though my mum is! =-(

 

In other species it is more acceptable because there is a large gene pool to work with, but with bearded dragons it has become a huge problem. The captive gene pool started out far too small, and there were far too many people breeeding them in a small amount of time. In less than a decade, we have seen a drastic decline in the size, health, and over-all quality of these animals. In other species you can inbreed and not really see any problem, but with bearded dragons you can have aggression ot genetic deformities after just one instance of inbreeding, it is that serious. This is why we always recommend tracing your bloodlines back by at least 5 generations to ensure there is not any close relation or inbreeding in their histories. Almost all bearded dragons in captivity are related to some degree now, we have to do our best to try and keep them as genetically strong as possible, and we can't do that with inbreeding and linebreeding anymore.

Inbreeding to preserve color morphs is no longer acceptable, and I am really curious which experts it is you are referring to that still do this. Care to say? I know only a couple of big named breeders who did this in the past before we knew of the problems associated with it, and over the years they have seen terrible results from it. They now acknowledge it was a mistake and have either gotten out of the business or are taking steps to fix it.

 

no cm isnt 19 inches. its only 8 inches

 

They said 20cm head to vent, not including the tail.

 

I don't know what you are trying to say. Try using punctuation, complete sentences. 20cm is 7.8".

 

Don't forget we are mixing uk and us conversations here and it's a fight against yard and feet! lol! And by the looks of the picture and rather obvious head shape and size l would say you have 1 female and 2 males there to choose from! Top being the female! Where abouts in wolverhampton do you have to go to jack020?

 

penn, i think thats on the address neway! i want a male i think. only 2 of the beardies in the pic are for sale because 1 had its feet or foot bitten off by its dad!=-( so do you think the one thats at the top of the pic is female? he said that they are all male and he should know as they are 5/6 months old now. thinks thats an old pic or sumink?!

 

Whoa! Any idea how that happened? It doesn't take a lot of sense to know that dad shouldn't have been anywhere near those babies. The breeder is lucky that baby wasn't killed.

 

no i dnt know but its fine now. it was a mistake neway!

 

A huge mistake because, as kephy said, the father should not have been anywhere near the babies! My babies are in a different tank and a different room, they never see eachother let alone have contact! Oh and with the picture it might have been that it's a side view of the top one as the reason you can tell the bottom 2 are male is because of the head shape! Females are no where near as broad as that! Where are you coming from by the way?

 

Hello all, Ok im from the UK and am fairly expereinced breeder, im currently keeping and breeding,
1.4 Pogona vitticeps
2.7 Eublepharis Macularis
1.3 Hemitheconyx caudicinctus
1.2 Gecko gecko
2.6 Rhacodactylus ciliatus
1.2 Rhac ' auriculatus
1.4 Hemidactylus turcicus
3.4 Elaphe guttata
1.1 Pituophis melanoleucus
2.3 Morlelia spilota (sp)
I also keep other sp, but only as singles etc and not breeding projects, Ok now to the point, the 20cm stated for the dragons size was S-VL so is only aprox half of the beardies total size, £30(50 USD?) In the UK for a good quality dragon is an very good price, the often retail at £65(115 USD?) for bog standard pogona, and then up to £200(350 USD?). The Purple Tiger morph, is in fact a real colour phase, and shauns dragons do display these features. As for proving a dragons unrelated liniage, this is not nesercery. Inbreeding for a few Gens will have no ill effect what so ever. And problems only really arise after several continued gens of inbreeding, and to be honest i doubt many of you can prove your dragons liniage that far back. Hope ive not offended anyone, just hoping to explain a few things.
Tom

 

do you have any pictures of these 'purple tigers', i've never heard of them. And i've never heard 'inbreeding' and 'no ill effects' in the same sentence.

 

most animals you buy from a pet shop will inbred to a certrain degree, granted its not benificial to the offsprings health but im most cases, slight inbreeding is not overly detrimental, how do you think morpsh and select patterns were created.

 

so your telling me that when a new morph ocours from a random genetic mutation, lets say leusistic, the breeder should wait for another one to radomly be breed (one in a several million chance) ,so he can continue the morph? No he would breed the animal to another to produce hets, then breed the het offspring back to the leusistic, to get more, Which is inbreeding. so are you telling me that no breeder, that breeds an new morph will not try and continue his line. Also inbreeding is an issue but it only takes one breeding to a new gene pool to reverse all the issuse's from many generations of inbreeding. And i think the issues of inbreeding of pogona are maybe more severe in the USA than the UK as there not bred to the same numbers here, but granted it could become a problem in the future.

 

True, and that's why many of us do not breed. However most of the experienced breeders on this website can and do trace the lineage that far back. Yes it takes an extra effort but it is worth it. Also, I do not know one respectable breeder (in the US anyways) these days that inbreeds dragons to preserve color morphs. It is no longer acceptable and it is no longer practiced.

There was recently a very long conversation on this subject. You might want to read through it. It brings up a lot of the topics that you just did regarding inbreeding to preserve color morphs and such (yes, even leucistics and hypos), and why there are ways around it.

http://www.reptilerooms.com/forumtopic-15784.html

 

The uk beardies have come from the same place as the us so they are more inbred more than you think! How do you know that there's less inbreeding in the uk than in the us anyway out of interest?

 

With the rare exception there is no "new" genetic stock of beardies. The original stock was in the dozens. Not nearly enough to ensure variablity and genetic drift. Yes, breeders who care do go back 5 generations. Just because you don't doesn't mean that no one does. FYI, given how inbred the entire beardie population is (and if you would like to discuss that further you can pm me or kephy or Cheri or Randy or so on) it isnt that rare to get a trait such a leucistic since every one is working with the same gene pool.

 

Here's a little anecdote for ya. A year or so ago on another forum I met a girl who had recently hatched out some babies with curly tails. She wanted to know what went wrong. After a little probing we found out she had mated her perfectly healthy female to her perfectly healthy father. That's right, one instance of inbreeding was all it took for genetic deformities. This may not happen every single time you mate offspring to parent, but it happens enough. Is it worth the risk to preserve a fancy color? I would certainly hope not.

One only has to examine the over-all decreasing size and health of the lizards to know it has already gone too far. Time to start being a part of the solution, instead of part of the problem.

 

What happened to the babies were they alright though? Not that that makes a difference in this subject, l just wondered?! Oh and kephy do you know how one of my babies could've ended up with a bent tail through hatching? He's the only one and they (l have managed to find out so far during today) aren't related by 2 generations so far but have more phone calls to make! The bend is about 1cm from the base of his tail and there is a slight kink in the very end only l'm thinking maybe he managed to break it or something! He did come out very tangled up and non of the others di! Sorry to bring this into this forum but it was just while a had kephy here! lol! Sorry!