Interest check for a future clutch?

[Lurhstaap]

I wasn't sure which forum was the most appropriate for this thread. If this was the wrong choice, sorry about that!

As some of you may remember, a few months ago I acquired a female dragon from Rainbow Bearded Dragons. She was stunning when she first arrived and has continued to grow even more stunning. Her beard is literally blood-red in some places, to the point where I once actually thought she was hurt and bleeding! It took me a few minutes to figure out that it was only the color of her scales!

Also, she is 100% het for both hypo and trans.

Now, RBD is having a sale on their stock, so I took the opportunity to buy a male from her that is not too closely related to Pele and who is also 100% het for hypo and trans. I am going to spend the intervening years while both grow to maturity preparing to breed them. I only intend to breed them once or twice, but they're both so exquisite that it just seems a shame not to.

However, I also feel that it is wise to find out how much interest there is in the future babies. This is not the only place I am posting this question of course - I am also investigating local placement possibilities - but I thought the people of this forum might want an opportunity to have a shot at such nice babies for much less than a professional breeder would sell them for. I don't really intend to make money off this, I just want to propagate these really amazing genes carried by these dragons, and try to add some more hypos, trans, and/or hypo-trans to the world. Of course plenty of the babies will simply be het for one or both genes, but still, they will have absolutely lovely reds, oranges, and purples.

I'll try to take a new photo of Pele so you can see what she looks like now, but it's very difficult to take a photo of her which does her justice. The male hasn't arrived yet; I won't have him until the beginning of next month, after I get paid and thus can pay for him. But he's spoken for! He'll be just as red as Pei is when he grows up, if his parents are any indication!

So, all in all, what I'm asking is this - how many of you would be interested in a het hypo, het trans, het hypotrans, hypo het trans, trans het hypo, or hypotrans baby in a year or so? They'll be brilliantly red with nice purple patches on their sides pretty much no matter what, but since both parents are het for both traits there is a good possibility of hypos, transes, and hypo-transes in the clutch. If I find enough interest I will breed them as often as necessary to fill the interest in the babies, but if interest is low I will probably breed them only once.

Thank you all for reading! I will update with new photos of Pele once I'm able to get some that at least sort of do her justice.

 

[Jayson745]

Now, RBD is having a sale on their stock, so I took the opportunity to buy a male from her that is not too closely related to Pele and who is also 100% het for hypo and trans.

how closely is not too closely?
Also, breeding het to het doesn't give you known hets. Your going to end up with a bunch of possible hets. basically, whatever babies aren't hypo, will have a 66% chance of being het for hypo. You wont know which one have it. Same goes for trans. 1 out of 16 babies will be hypo trans and the rest will have this 66% situation on at least one of the genes. To say your going to breed them to make sure the genes are propagated doesn't make much sense considering that rainbow breeds them like crazy. Their genes are all over the place already. personally, I think if you want to breed your female, you should just buy a hypo trans male from someone else. rainbow charges sooo much that you can probably get a hypo trans from a smaller breeder for the same price and they aren't going to be cousins or whatever this situation is. Color isn't nearly as rare as it used to be either. There is fire all over the place now.
My response isn't to discourage your enthusiasm, but simply to give my opinion. People dont pay much for 66% hets because its a lot of money/work/space to grow up a beardie and find out you missed the gene. I think the outcome will be much better with a hypo trans male from another source. 1 out of 4 babies will be hypo trans, and the ones that aren't will be 100% het and sell much faster for a better price. Its win win win

 

[Lurhstaap]

Tamara has several new animals from outside sources this year, which is part of what motivated me to buy from her again. Also, I was extremely impressed with the quality of Pele and the care she received before coming to me so I do not feel that Tamara overprices. I'd rather spend a bit more and get what I paid for than try to get a better deal and end up disappointed. (Also, she's giving pretty significant discounts right now, too, so I didn't actually pay all that much for this guy. $115.)

Pele's father is the male's grandfather, but that is the only point of shared lineage I can find. Still counts as line-breeding, I'd think, but it's not sibling to sibling or anything. The chance of concentrating unpleasant recessives seems pretty low.

Do these genes not behave in a standard recessive manner? From my understanding of how this works, if I take a pair of animals which are both recessive for a given gene, it works out like this, using letters to represent the gene status. Let's just use Hypo as an example, so H.

H H = a hypo animal
H h = An animal which is het for hypo
h h = A normal animal with no recessive genes.

H h
H HH Hh
h Hh hh

In short, only one-fourth of any given clutch from such parents ought to be simply normal dragons. Obviously bad luck can happen, or good luck, but that's the basic picture. There's a three-in-four chance that any given dragon is hypo or het for hypo. It ought to be the same with trans.

Now, given that BOTH parents are het for BOTH traits, this means that the odds of any given dragon having NEITHER gene would be more like half of 33%, wouldn't it? Then again math is not my strong suit so it's highly possible that I'm missing something.

Anyhow, with all that said, all of that only matters if I were breeding for sale to other breeders. I'm not looking to get into this as a business. You may say that color 'isn't as rare as it used to be' and this is true, but available is not the same thing as readily affordable for all people. From where I'm sitting, dragons with the kind of color Pele has, and which the male will have as an adult, are not easy to come by at a double-digit price. If you know where such things can be found, do tell me, but I've never found a breeder who sells dragons this fine for such a low price. I grant that Tamara's prices are somewhat higher than normal, but not to the point that there's hundreds of thousands of vivid dragons out there just floating around homeless. I've NEVER seen a dragon of the type I plan to breed available for the cost of shipping and nothing else. Which is what I'm offering here. ;p

Basically, this isn't me saying, "I want to start a business, how many customers are there out there?" What I'm saying is, "I am going to breed my dragons once or twice in the future and they will very likely be really neat babies. Who would want to adopt one when this happens?"

Beyond personal reasons, my motivation in doing this is to make some really fine dragons available to people who, like me, can easily afford the care and upkeep of dragons, but not necessarily the outright purchase cost of the really nice ones. Obviously "boring" dragons make great pets too (I love my Sun-bun just as much as Pele and he's 'just' a pet store dragon) but at the same time I think most people who can't afford the vividly colored ones would still want one if they had the opportunity to acquire one affordably. I'm not under the delusion that Pele's coloration is "rare", but I do know that dragons like her are always much more expensive than your typical pet store dragon regardless of where you go, at least in my experience. Does that make more sense?

 

[Jayson745]

Ok, I'll try to explain this differently. For the sake of explaining, we'll say that you had 4 babies, and the odds played out exactly how you would expect, even though saying 1 out of 4 will be hypo means "odds are" and there is variance to what you actually get. So, you breed 2 het hypos, and have 4 babies. Of those 4 babies, 1 is a hypo. So you move him to the side because you know what he is. Of the other 3 babies, only 2 of them are het hypo and 1 is a normal. BUT, you dont know which one isn't het. So you sell all 3 of those as 66% het, because thats the odds of being het hypo for each baby. Get what I mean? So 3 out of every 4 babies has this 66% chance of being het hypo. But sense you'd also be doing that with the trans gene at the same time, almost all of your babies are going to be 66% het for one or the other and people (especially breeders) aren't fond of raising/breeding 66% hets if they can avoid it. It drastically changes their value to people. Odds of hitting both genes when breeding 2 double hets together = 1 out of 16. The rest will be 66% for one or the other. You'll get a lot of hypo 66% het trans, and trans 66% hypo, and 66% for both genes without hitting either visually. Basically if you want to hook up other breeders, most of them aren't going to go very far out of their way to buy them. Especially the males will be almost worthless to breeders because to use them, they have to spare a ready to breed female to see what genes he has. If you had a crystal ball and know what babies were het for what, it wouldn't be so bad, but you wont know who is het for what.
As far as their relation goes, you basically have the nephew and are considering breeding him to his aunt. Will this cause problems? Probably not. Is it worth doing knowing you can get another mate? probably not.

 

[Lurhstaap]

I guess you didn't read my post... I'm not going to bother retyping things you already ignored.

Also, it's more like half-nephew and half-aunt, because the one dragon is their only point of connection. If the female parent in that generation were also shared, then it would be nephew-aunt. Of course, line breeding isn't a frequent tactic used by breeders or anything (sarcasm) but that's another debate altogether.

And, as I asked repeatedly in my other post, if you know where I can get a male dragon of equivalent or superior quality, of equally bright reds and purples, 100% het hypo trans, for the same price ($115 plus shipping) or better, tell me and I'll gladly look into it. I know of no such place.

 

[Jayson745]

Also, despite the prices that personally I think are out of the normal range, this tamara doesn't seem to think there is a problem with labeling 66% hets as het. Check this thread out sense it has to do with this conversation and oddly the person your buying from as well. http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=191058&highlight=hets&page=2
this is an older thread

 

[Jayson745]

I will say she grows some big fat healthy beardies. So shes good about that part. So if you choose to buy from her, I believe you will get a nice healthy dragon. The prices and 66% het thing is my only issue.

 

[Jayson745]

I guess you didn't read my post... I'm not going to bother retyping things you already ignored.

Also, it's more like half-nephew and half-aunt, because the one dragon is their only point of connection. If the female parent in that generation were also shared, then it would be nephew-aunt. Of course, line breeding isn't a frequent tactic used by breeders or anything (sarcasm) but that's another debate altogether.

And, as I asked repeatedly in my other post, if you know where I can get a male dragon of equivalent or superior quality, of equally bright reds and purples, 100% het hypo trans, for the same price ($115 plus shipping) or better, tell me and I'll gladly look into it. I know of no such place.

Sorry I'm multi tasking and didn't realize you responded. I'll say straight off, that I obviously read your post. There was a lot in it. I addressed the issues with your pairing. I'm trying to help. If you don't want my help, then I will gladly stop posting. I'm not getting paid to help you, so getting snappy with me will get you nowhere.

"Pele's father is the male's grandfather" That means pele is this males aunt. Which is exactly what I said. It depends on how it was done though I think. I'm trying to think it through. But if this grandfather had a baby(pele) and peles sister had a baby (the male you want to breed her too), pele is the new males aunt. If this new males mom was only a half sister(different gramma), to peles mom, there is a little extra space between them. I think I got that right, yes? Yea, I think we're on the same page there. Did she specify if the new males mom was the old females sister or half sister? Because looking at that thread I linked, shes going to minimize it and not volunteer what she means when describing the "grandpa". It could really go either way without asking directly.

 

[Lurhstaap]

The reason I said you didn't seem to have read my post is that you made frequent references to my selling the babies, and specifically in one or two places you mentioned other breeders. I tried to go out of my way to express the fact that I am NOT trying to go into this as a business and was NOT intending to actually -sell- the babies. And moreover that other breeders weren't really who this is aimed at, although they are welcome to ask if interested (although I definitely see why they wouldn't be; it's not that I don't agree with your logic per se.)

Rather I am simply seeking people who would be interested in adopting them. If I could afford it I would pay the shipping and all and make them totally free but I just simply can't. In my book having to pay for the shipping isn't "free," which is why I didn't use that term originally. But it's still a much, much lower price than one would normally have to pay. At least, so far as I know.

I do appreciate that you're trying to help. I just didn't feel like you were really reading what I had written, but were rather skimming and seeing only the parts you expected to see. That's an experience I've had frequently online and it's very difficult, for me at least, to tell the difference between that and an oops such as what apparently happened here (you reposting without realizing I had already replied.) I genuinely apologize if I came across as angry. It wasn't intentional. I only meant to try to prompt a closer reading of my words.

The lineage is a bit more complex than that. XD As I mentioned, Tamara has a good deal of new stock, and by that I did not mean simply the grown-up babies from previous home-bred pairings. Here's what it boils down to -- The same male was bred to Pele's mother and to this male's grandmother. But as far as I can tell those two females were totally unrelated. I don't think any of Pele's siblings were kept by Tamara, actually. And if any were kept, they're not old enough to breed yet anyway. Pele is only about ten months old. That's part of why I specified in my original post that the actual babies I intend to breed won't exist for over a year!

EDIT: Also, it occurs to me that if I searched far enough back in just about any "purebred" dragon's lineage I would probably find significant line breeding. It's pretty difficult to avoid sometimes when you're breeding for a specific trait. I don't really like the idea of doing it a lot, especially with very close relatives, but at the same time I think it's pretty well demonstrated that it can be worth doing for the sake of concentrating desired traits.

Also I want to emphasize that my final sentence in the previous post was not sarcastic! If you really do know of places where I could get such a dragon for the same or better price, I really would look into it right away.

EDIT II: My turn to miss a post or two of yours! XD Sorry, I try to keep everything I want to say in one post and usually edit rather than making a new post so it didn't occur to me to check for other posts of yours.

Anyhow, in my experience with Tamara she's always clearly labeled her sale dragons with percentages. Some are said to be 66% het, others 100% het, and she also always provides information about the parents of each clutch and the parents' heritage. But with that said, my involvement with her began only a few months ago with my purchase of Pele. I can't speak about anything that may have happened before December '12.

I won't say that I necessarily agree 100% with every decision she makes, but I do think that her heart is in the right place and that her animals seem to be happy and healthy, and she seems like a generally honest person. Whatever her dealings with other people have been, I haven't found a reason to question anything she's said to me, personally, for what that's worth. *shrug*

Beyond that I can't say anything really. I don't know anything about what's happened with other people, or before I first bought a dragon from her. And I certainly don't know anything about breeding as a business. I intend to breed once or twice as a hobby but that's not the same thing at all.

 

[Jayson745]

No hard feelings. I apologize as well. And admit I did misread the part about selling to breeders. I thought that was the intention and read it the opposite of what you actually said. My phone keeps going off, and people are bugging me while I'm trying to talk to you. I thought the most important thing to address was what you'd get from the pairing as far as hets go, sense it sounded like you might now fully understand that aspect of it. Its awesome that you're just looking to help people out, and this hobby would be a lot more awesome if more people thought like you do.
And yes there is inbreeding going on to some extent because thats the only way recessive traits are propagated. Meaning if you go back far enough in the family tree every trans will be related somewhere back in the line. But we try to avoid it as much as possible. Humans can marry their 2nd cousins, so I dont think we should hold beardies to a higher standard than humans. But avoiding it as best we can is a good thing in every way. Actually, all the beardies in america come from a relatively small group before australia closed their borders to export.
As far as where you can get a different one, I sent you a pm

 

[Jayson745]

For all I know she stopped the bs with the possible hets. Its an old thread. But its not hearsay as she posts in the thread saying what she does and how she feels about it.

I know you made it clear that you weren't out to make money. But as you also mentioned, its not free to produce/move them. You'll move 100% hets much faster than 66% hets. And have more hypos, trans, and hypo trans to boot. I understand where your coming from, but at the end of the day, you still want to produce something people will want even if its not to make more money right?

 

[Lurhstaap]

True. But I also want to note that for me, at least, the temperament and the colors are the most important thing. The presence of trans or hypo genes is just a cool bonus. What I'm really hoping to see more than anything else are (on the adult babies, I mean, not right out of the shell obviously) really vivid reds combined with strong expression of the purple side bars. I've seen plenty of very red dragons, and a few dragons with very strong purple side bars, but not a whole lot of dragons with both. And either way, how often can you get high color dragons for nothing but the cost of shipping? I've had enough people who live near me ask for a baby if I ever breed Pele to know that color and temperament alone will be enough for a lot of people.

Still I do want to emphasize that I appreciate your trying to help me.