Albino x albinio = 3 non albino babies..

[Thorgecko707]

You could sell them after you do a 70's Harrison Ford.

 

[TokayKeeper]

1. As mentioned earlier, you could cull off. However, I don't think this is needed.
   
2. We also don't know for certain if you do have 2 different albinos, though the likelihood is VERY high. Thus there's no need to rush to any extreme assumptions yet.
   
3. What I would do is destroy all other eggs from the pair. You're only at 3 offspring so far. 2 of my first season females this year are already at clutch 6....for that matter, looking at my excel file all my females are at clutch 6 except for a couple recent pairings. 3 versus 12 potential offspring isn't bad given the circumstances.
   
4. I'd test cross at this point. You already are working on the male with the eclipse het tremper. That should, or shouldn't, prove him out. The problem now is the female. If you have any other Rainwater albinos in your collection, then you could simply test cross using them. If not, then I'd pick up just a simple plain het for RW albino male; assuming she is Rainwater (pretty safe bet).
   
5. The only problem I see with test crossing the female is if she retains any sperm this season for next. However, test crossing her is the safer route than test crossing any of her current offspring and perpetuating the tremper gene linked to another albino strain.

I had a lot better response, but work was rather cerebral tonight and much of it has gone out the window. Plus I'm distracted by the smell of rain outside, the first shower of our weakly starting monsoon season rolled through about 30 minutes ago.

 

[im faster]

I have a beautiful high yellow male het rainwater ill pair unless I find a rw soon

 

[lillith]

On a side not..
i have heard many times that crossing albino strains cause deformities.. weaker geckos and other negative physical effects..

these show NONE of any form..

so im wondering what the big deal is..
are they not het now for both rainwater and tremper?
if they are what is the negative side effect?
couldnt it be better? in they could be paired with either tremper or rw?


obviously i did not mean to do this.. now that i understand there is no physical negativities so far. what is the problem?

First of all, I'm wondering where you heard crossing the albino strains causes deformities...because I don't think I have ever heard that.

Second of all, this in particular;
"couldnt it be better? in they could be paired with either tremper or rw?"


NO, NO, NO, A THOUSAND TIMES NO!!!
Because then you are still creating further unknown double hets that will never be cleaned up.
You should never, never, never consider breeding these offspring, not even as an outcross!
Especially not as an outcross!

Unless you test breed the mother with your het Rainwater and confirm that she is NOT a Rainwater, because then you'd have something really weird up your sleeve. Then you'd have to test breed Dad to see if he is a double het himself. Honestly, I think dad is a Tremper, mom is a Rainwater. I would wait to test breed her until next season, just to make sure she doesn't have any more retained sperm.

I am really sorry this ever happened, it shouldn't have.
I agree with tossing any other eggs she produces this year.
I'm also sorry if people find my stance on culling to be upsetting, it's just what I would do. And I would do it with a very heavy heart, and probably cry and snivel to myself like a baby while I did. It's not the baby geckos' fault they're here, they are cute and adorable, and would make great pets, but unless you either sterilize them or keep them for life, I'm not sure what you can do with them. I would go so far as to say if you do keep them, keep them in an entirely different room so there are no accidental mixups in the future. I hope they're labeled on their enclosures now.

 

[Baoh]

On a side not..
i have heard many times that crossing albino strains cause deformities.. weaker geckos and other negative physical effects..

these show NONE of any form..

What you heard is just the result of other people spewing their ignorance of the subject. Crossing albino/amel variants doesn't have a negative effect on the animals. Only on breeding fidelity and the market.

You have done nothing wrong, by the way. The seller may also have done little to nothing wrong. A heterozygous animal can defy many test breedings for years and its heterozygous nature can be passed down for generations. The probability drops, but it doesn't become zero. Many forget that. Realistically, you cannot test breed an animal for half of a decade or more to see what it might or might not have. You test for a reasonable number of animals, whatever that may be, and then you reevaluate on going one way or another. There's little else that could be reasonably expected.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Hankj]

If you guys really feel the need in culling these animals because they don't fit your breeding dream at least feed the little lizard to something. Don't waste all that energy by freezing or what ever you do. Give it to a snake. Feed it to a pacman. Let a piranha enjoy the little guy.

 

[ElapidSVT]

If you guys really feel the need in culling these animals because they don't fit your breeding dream

that has nothing to do with the reasoning behind culling them. culling helps reduce the possibility (to zero) that these offspring will ruin someone else's breeding dreams.

 

[Thorgecko707]

Dennis, hit up a college and see if they need them. Or a school like stated before. Or sell them to me. If you cull them I still want them.

 

[lillith]

A research facility is a good idea! Is Texas A&M still doing gecko studies?

 

[im faster]

weird i typed a replied but its gone..

so what is the problem with double hets?
i hear snake people talking about it like its a good thing.

and how is there anything unknown?

 

[Tony C]

The issue with it is the confusion of trying to figure out which baby is which strain when breeding double hets for different albinos. I personally think the problem is a bit overblown since it is usually not too difficult to distinguish between them visually, but it is regarded as a major issue in the gecko community so you're best off going along with it. It's hard enough to sell babies without having a rep as a strain crosser.

 

[im faster]

gotcha.. i was just trying to understand the actual reason for people not approving it

 

[Darcpixie]

I don't get it either, as anery and charcoal in corn snakes are a LOT more confusing then 3 t+ albino strains, so I'm not sure WHY whitegeckos (giant piles of homozygous gene POWER, IMO) are so frowned upon, but they are.

Then again, we're still debating linebred vs. Simple recessive for a lot of morphs, so I guess no one wants to muddle the waters when figuring out genetics in a critter with a short generation time.

So confusing, this need to cull outcrosses between things as piddling as ALBINO STRAINS, but whatever.

Maybe the 2-3 year generation time in corn snakes accounts for this? Dunno!!

Lemme know what the sexes are on those things Dennis, wouldn't mind giving one a pet home to get fat on roaches.

 

[Big Red One]

Guys.

Not wanting to hijack this thread or start a war - but......

Seriously, what is the massive issue with multi het albinos ?

If for example you had a het Tremper het Bell animal but all the rest of your collection was say Tremper, what would be the issue using it to breed to the Trempers? (I know the 'answer' by the way - you would have 50% poss het Bell offspring produced) but tbh - 'so what' ?

What I'm alluding to is if you then got Tremper albinos (still poss het bell) and they were sold as Tremper albinos then anyone wanting to breed them would invariably pair them to Tremper albinos down the line.
EVEN if these future generations were still potentially also het Bell then most would still be paired to Trempers.
I understand that there'd then be potential ID issues with these 'potential' poss het Bells but that would only happen if they met somewhere in the future. Like some folks have already said, there's all sorts of hets knocking about already, mostly from 'pet store' geckos. For example where do all the 'het provers/outcrosses' end up? Bet they aren't all culled.

Personally I think culling healthy animals from any pairing is not good. It's the same as culling a box of puppies in my eyes, just cos the parents aren't 100 pedigree. Does nobody love anything less than pure breed, whether dogs or reps?

To cap off where I am coming from, if you are THAT BOTHERED about the genetic cleanliness of your breeding projects then stick with breeders who can prove their lines are 'pure' (I'm sure there are plenty out there). If you are wanting pure lines it's hardly likely you will be throwing pet store pickups into the mix anyway is it?!

After saying all this, I do keep my lines separate - I didn't throw my DB over to my Bells to get 'het bell het eclipse' on the cheap. But tbh if I had done then bred the offspring to a 'clean' Bell Eclipse then I wouldn't really end up with ID problems would I ? I'd get some Bell Eclipses that would be possibly het Tremper and Blizzard.......
Really - so what?

As I said, not starting any wars but rather I am interested in why it's all seen as such a bad thing that otherwise healthy animals would be killed for 'purity' ?

 

[TokayKeeper]

Guys.

Not wanting to hijack this thread or start a war - but......

Seriously, what is the massive issue with multi het albinos ?

If for example you had a het Tremper het Bell animal but all the rest of your collection was say Tremper, what would be the issue using it to breed to the Trempers? (I know the 'answer' by the way - you would have 50% poss het Bell offspring produced) but tbh - 'so what' ?

What I'm alluding to is if you then got Tremper albinos (still poss het bell) and they were sold as Tremper albinos then anyone wanting to breed them would invariably pair them to Tremper albinos down the line.
EVEN if these future generations were still potentially also het Bell then most would still be paired to Trempers.
I understand that there'd then be potential ID issues with these 'potential' poss het Bells but that would only happen if they met somewhere in the future. Like some folks have already said, there's all sorts of hets knocking about already, mostly from 'pet store' geckos. For example where do all the 'het provers/outcrosses' end up? Bet they aren't all culled.

Personally I think culling healthy animals from any pairing is not good. It's the same as culling a box of puppies in my eyes, just cos the parents aren't 100 pedigree. Does nobody love anything less than pure breed, whether dogs or reps?

To cap off where I am coming from, if you are THAT BOTHERED about the genetic cleanliness of your breeding projects then stick with breeders who can prove their lines are 'pure' (I'm sure there are plenty out there). If you are wanting pure lines it's hardly likely you will be throwing pet store pickups into the mix anyway is it?!

After saying all this, I do keep my lines separate - I didn't throw my DB over to my Bells to get 'het bell het eclipse' on the cheap. But tbh if I had done then bred the offspring to a 'clean' Bell Eclipse then I wouldn't really end up with ID problems would I ? I'd get some Bell Eclipses that would be possibly het Tremper and Blizzard.......
Really - so what?

As I said, not starting any wars but rather I am interested in why it's all seen as such a bad thing that otherwise healthy animals would be killed for 'purity' ?

The best example of a current goof up I can give would be the "Galaxy".

From personal experience...

I've owned a Rainwater albino male for 10 years this month. I chose to pair him with a patternless female in an attempt to do some out crossing this season. My first clutch to hatch contained a normal and a patternless. I wasn't expecting to hatch out a patternless from that gecko 10 years down the road! That would be the problem with the possible hets, somewhere down the road someone's not going to be happy. If it were me I'd be pissed if another (unwanted) albino strain popped up in my collection since I deal strictly with the Rainwater line. The only way I'd not be pissed is if that random albino strain was unrelated to the current 3 strains available.

I'm sure there are various double hets out there of combined albino strains origin and I'm sure some out there didn't care that they knowingly put them out there. In this case, someone produced them by accident and thus knowingly has "contaminated" albino strains. Again, I'd not want to run the risk of one of those 66%, 50%, 25%, 12.5%, 6.25%, 3.125%, etc possible hets suddenly giving me an unwanted surprise when I'm focused solely on one strain of albinism.

IMHO, it's not a matter of being a purist, or thinking any given strain is more elite over the other, but rather an issue of ethics and morals - both of which seem to be very lacking at times in the reptile community.

To answer another question, pertaining to pure breeds...All of us are techincally on both sides of it here. The current captive population of leopard geckos, ignoring the deli cup mutations, is a grab bag of the various subspecies; even more so now with people crossing the afghanicus and fasciolatus subspecies into the morphs. The later part of that is pissing me off because people aren't stating what percent of the lineage relates back to those subspecies. In contrast, the carpet python community is very good at letting you know that info, example: 88% diamond carpet crosses, etc. Then there are the individuals that like to keep locality animals and I'm one of those such individuals with certain species I keep. I love my mutt leopard geckos, and I'm going to love then just as mcuh as my pure subspecies I'll be picking up shortly. I love them just as much as my locality specific corn snake, mexican hognose snakes, great plains rat snakes, plains hognose snakes, and new mexico milk snakes.

 

[justindh1]

All morphs were created from hidden genetics that the breeders happened upon out of chance. To think that there is only one leopard gecko the originally held the genetics seems far fetched. There actually could have been an occurrence in which a previous discovered morph has popped out of a pairing that wasn't known to contain any hets.

I have been noticing lately that there has been a lot of unexpected outcomes with pairings from breeders. It makes me wonder what percentage of leopard geckos in captivity actually have hidden hets? I bet it happens to more breeders then what is talked about.

I would rather cull any offspring from crossed albino strains. It would just make me feel better that I wasn't creating a bigger problem then what is already out there.

 

[M_surinamensis]

Interesting subject.

For whatever it might be worth, I wouldn't terminally cull these offspring.

I'm a strong proponent of regarding genetic management as an absolute, deformities with an unknown cause, hybrids and non-naturally occurring intergrades, genetic conditions which represent a danger to the quality of life of the individual animal or to the quality of the captive population as it can be said to be representative of the natural state.

A problem like this is something I see as arising out of record keeping, identification and selective breeding. It's something that can be addressed using the same tools. Somewhere, by someone, this parent was misidentified or its genetic mutation was improperly recorded. It was bred to an animal which was not an ideally selected mate, the babies which resulted were unexpected and may be regarded as undesirable as a consequence of the specific heterozygous conditions they are carrying.* They should be relabeled, re-recorded and selectively reconsidered.

The counterargument to that would be the same one levied against any decision not to terminally cull any undesirable animal; that control cannot be guaranteed, that ownership may not be eternal and that the responsibility exists here and now in the hands of the current owner.

It all comes down to a subjective judgment of the potential harm the animal represents (to itself and to the captive population) and if that harm is significant enough to warrant ending the animal's life.

In this case, I don't think it does, I would keep the offspring alive and either keep them or explain the SNAFU and sell them with a proper label... but it should be understood that color mutations rank very very low on my list of priorities. Those who are more actively involved may take a different view.



*when people speak of "double hets" in a positive manner, it's an animal which is heterozygous for two mutually desirable traits. Amelanism AND axanthism, which combine to form a dramatically unique visual appearance for example.

 

[Gazz]

The best example of a current goof up I can give would be the "Galaxy".

That was a differant type of goof up, That was a so called pro breeder not doing his homework of his own files/records.

What about a nother i beleave pro breeder to the US, Mixed his Marble eye to Eclipse eye to test breed, Now this cross resulted in over 40 HET Eclipse eye,HET Marble eye offspring, Was this over 40 double HET offspring culled ??? where are they now.

And if double HET Albinos are not like coz they can look the same/similar, Why is Blizardpatternless not, Coz they look like yellow Blizzard and Yellow blizards are every where, And people still confuse them as being Blizardpatternless but people still breed in hope of Blizardpatternless.

 

[Gazz]

I will not kill them..

i will keep them for myself before i did that!!!

What about using the offsring in the goal of making a Talbinoralbino leo,
A (Homozygous)Tremper albino and a (Homozygous)Rainwater albino leo,
So we can see what thay look like.

HET Talbino,Ralbino X HET Talbino,Ralbino = .

Poss-HET Talbino,Ralbino.
Ralbino Poss-HET Talbino.
Talbino Poss-HET Ralbino.
Talbinoralbino.

 

[rickmoss95]

That was a differant type of goof up, That was a so called pro breeder not doing his homework of his own files/records.

What about a nother i beleave pro breeder to the US, Mixed his Marble eye to Eclipse eye to test breed, Now this cross resulted in over 40 HET Eclipse eye,HET Marble eye offspring, Was this over 40 double HET offspring culled ??? where are they now.

And if double HET Albinos are not like coz they can look the same/similar, Why is Blizardpatternless not, Coz they look like yellow Blizzard and Yellow blizards are every where, And people still confuse them as being Blizardpatternless but people still breed in hope of Blizardpatternless.

it funny how it is okay for some(or thats how i am reading it, at least some rationalization for some), but if it involves a morph you dont care for...its wrong? i think alot of people get too worked up and too involved in something they personally have NOTHING to do with??? i understand people dont want to mix the albino strains..but in this case, it was NOT done on purpose. so the op did nothing wrong in my opinion. if you people that would KILL an animal that is perfectly healthy, just because it is not YOUR idea of "the perfect gecko"...to me this is just stupid. there are plenty of other options for those animals. i understand culling an animal that is so defformed or otherwise not able to live a healty life, but a HEALTHY animal??? ...just because it may not have your "ideal" genetics??? and again, i see the point of not wanting to dirty the genepool, but is it really that big of a deal to let these animals live? i am a bowhunter, so i have nothing against killing animals for the right reasons(eating the meat in my case), but i think this is a little silly to kill a perfectly healthy animal, for no reason other than the genetics it carries. i have all three strains of albino leopard geckos, and will never cross them, and i totally understand the arguements here....i just see alot of arrogance in this thread. i mean really, that is how new stuff is found, by crossing different genes, and how is test crossing the eclipse and the marble eye so wrong??? really???