Line breeding for color!!!

Hello everyone,

I did a little looking around the forums for line breeding info but didn't find much on this subject. I'd like to know more about line breeding for color in beardies. My question is basically, when you breed two high colored beardies do you necessarily have a better chance of hatching higher colored babies? If you breed a lesser colored hatchling from a clutch that is from high colored parents, do you have a good chance of hatching high colored babies?

Thanks,
Glenn

people don't typically inbreed beardies. Your best bet is to save a female or 2 that look to show the best color, then get an unrelated male to breed with them.

genetics can be unpredictable. Some babies will show a lot of promise when young, then the color fades as they age. Others go the other way and dont really shine until they grow some. This is why a lot of people ask for pictures of the parents before buying babies. It helps to get some idea of whether or not the color will fade. But that isn't 100%. Again, genetics can be quite unpredictable at times. But typically, more colorful parents will have more colorful babies. Also there can be quite a lot of variation in clutches, so you might get a few really colorful, some in the middle, and some quite plain looking. I see you have a very red beardie, so I would find a really red mate. If you put it with a citrus(yellow), you might end up with a bunch of orange looking babies. I'm a fan of red, so I'd try and shoot for that. But thats just me.

Jayson,

Thanks for your reply!
I wasn't considering inbreeding and my routine is to keep multiple females and then find a good quality male to breed to them. I was mainly interested in what breeders had to say about lesser colored hatchlings in clutches from high colored parents being promising parents of high colored babies??? Sounds confusing, but I see alot of low colored beardies being sold as "has great genetics, etc." and I wonder if they are really worth investing in if their own color isn't that great?

line breeding in the title made me think you were talking about something else. Anyway, "great genetics" is pretty much a sales ploy as far as I'm concerned. Same for showing pictures of a colorful clutchmate. I could be wrong, but I think you'd have better chances with a dragon who is showing a lot of color, over one of his ugly siblings. I'm not a large scale breeder though, so maybe someone who knows better will chime in.

Jayson, thanks for your replies!

Anyone else have any good input on the subject?

My opinion is that there is never any reason to line/inbreed a bearded dragon where color is concerned. There are just too many high quality, high color dragons out there to warrant inbreeding. It might cost a bit more, but there is always an unrelated mate out there suitable for even the nicest colored dragon.

OK, I just did some research on linebreeding and realize linebreeding is breeding related animals though not direct siblings (inbreeding). By line breeding I meant breeding "unrelated" dragons that have characteristics like high red coloration to each other with hopes of hatching babies with like or better red color. Sorry for the confusion!

Very simple.

If you breed mutts you get mutts.

The better you breed the better you get.

Thanks Ed,

That sounds logical. In all of this, I guess my main question was, is there true potential in breeding lesser colored offspring from great colored parents? I also now realize I was using the term "linebreeding" when I meant "selective breeding"!

Originally Posted by SnakeSmith

Thanks Ed,

I guess my main question was, is there true potential in breeding lesser colored offspring from great colored parents?

There is. breeding the lesser colored from a clutch from bright colored parents will produce some bright colored babies as the genetics is there.