Hereditary blindness

[kibakiba]

I'd like to breed Runt in a few years, assuming my situation is better than right now... She's beautiful and she's the strongest snake I have, and aside from being partially blind, she's amazingly healthy. The only thing that stops me from wanting to breed her when she's an adult is the fact that she is partially blind. I don't want the babies eye sight to be affected. I'm not sure if she's always been partially blind, but she's shown problems the entire time I've kept her. If her blindness is something that could be passed onto her offspring, would all of them have affected eyesight, or just some? I'd like to have a few opinions on the matter.
I don't plan on selling any babies, I just want my own Runt babies... Haha.

[guidofatherof5]

I don't think there is anyway to know Chantel. Without knowing the cause of Runt's blindness first.
I'm in a similar situation with my Tourette.
I think it with come down to your decision in the end.

[mb90078]

Is she WC or CB?

[kibakiba]

Runt was WC, based on her size then she was 6-12 months old. I guess if I do breed her, if any of them ended up really unhealthy in some way, I could put them down, and I'd have at least some sort of knowledge about her problems.

[mb90078]

I was asking, because if it happened to be CB there could have been severe inbreeding causing it. Being WC I happen to think the likelihood is less likely to be genetic and more likely to be caused by the environment, but of course, there's no way to know for certain.

[ConcinusMan]

Lets be clear about one thing. Inbreeding does not cause genetic diseases such as inheritable blindness, just like it doesn't cause amelanism (albinism) or a host of other inheritable traits, "good" or "bad". Inbreeding simply increases the chances of producing offspring that express "desirable" traits, (such as albinism, anery, high red, etc.) and in the process, any "undesirable" traits such as stub tails, bug eye, dwarfism, brain issues, and a few billion others, will also come to be expressed more frequently as well.

Being WC does not necessarily mean a snake doesn't carry a serious load of inheritable "bad" traits. In fact, all the "bad" traits we see in severely inbred snakes came from wild snakes in the first place. No matter how much we domesticate an animal, the morphs "we" come up with, come from genetics which were present all along.

Chantel, there is no reason to believe that Runt's eyesight issues are inheritable, or detrimental even if it is inheritable. Like you said, "aside from being partially blind, she's amazingly healthy". I'm sure there's a few million other snakes out there like that and they're fine. The eyesight issue is not likely to effect the offspring, and so what if it does as long as they are otherwise fit or can compensate for it with intelligence, physical strength, hardiness, etc.

Not breeding her just because she has eyesight issues....

[kibakiba]

Well I don't want a bunch of blind babies. It would make me sad. I have a hard enough time getting her to eat, because movement scares her... But it just takes an hour in a small dark box and she eventually gets her pinky halves down. It's a hard task wrangling her and getting her in the box, and since the babies will be kept as stictly pets for me, and maybe friends, I wouldn't want blindness to make feeding a whole lot harder. Snakes like Derpy are ones that I wouldn't exactly want to breed, because he has legitimate brain problems and I do think, in his case, it would be inherited. He's a crazy short bus snake. A good pet/friend, though.

[mb90078]

Of course, I didn't intend to over-simplify things. The combination of the fact that the snake could have had a rough life in the wild, and the reduced likelihood of the abnormality being caused by (brought out by, if you prefer) inbreeding over many generations, lead me to believe that the likelihood is that the offspring will not have a blindness disorder.

[ConcinusMan]

Of course, I did intend to complicate.

But yeah, I agree.

Chantel, you worry too much. If you inbreed for many generations and more than a few offspring are blind, then you may be onto something.

[kibakiba]

Of course I worry too much. From the minute I laid eyes on my new babies, just a couple minutes after they were born I was attached to them. I wouldn't want any offspring to have issues, because I'd have a hard time dealing with it, and if I'm upset over that... I start getting depressed, and I wouldn't be taking that great of care of my snakes due to the lethargy.
I don't plan on inbreeding, though, if I could help it. The only way it'd happen is if I accidentaly left someone in the tank for too long while cleaning the other tanks.