Questions about kinked caramels and breeding

Hi,

Was wondering about this last night while failing to get to sleep so I thought I'd ask the experts. :)

How would a kink in a female caramel affect her ability to breed and lay eggs successfully? Would it depend entirely on location or would complications result no matter where it happened to be?

I don't mean just physically either - how much would it figure into your decision on whether to mate her or not?

I watched Ralph's video with his kinked male and, ethical/genetic reasons aside, I it seems more likely a male would be able to breed without complications.

Do the kinked parents produce a higher ratio of kinked offspring or not? It was wondering this that raised the female breedability question. :confused:


dr del

I have never bred caramels myself, but would imagine that the kinking problem is genetic, since it shows up a lot in caramels. Since kinking is a genetic issue, then outbreeding would be very important. I also do not think that a kinked caramel should be bred, becasue it would be more likely that the babies would be kinked. I am no expert, and do not know this to be fact, but this is my opinion on the subject. Hope this helps, and hope to hear from others on this subject.

Tim Bailey is doing some research into the subject. I'm sure he will let us all know the outcome as soon as he knows more.

..Interesting thread!:gj:

I dont have an answer....but I hope to hear some insight! :salute:

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Originally Posted by Jerhart

..Interesting thread!:gj:

I dont have an answer....but I hope to hear some insight! :salute:

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I agree, I wish we could get this issue figured out once an for all.

We have four adult/subadult het caramels, and one nearly mature caramel male-not a kink in any one of them. they'll be breeding shortly.

I think that kinking in caramels is CLEARLY genetic. As such, any kinking (however slight) is a marker for the gene or genes that produce kinking, and IMO SHOULD disqualify that animal for breeding. I know it's painful, but if you want to be a serious breeder then you have to think about what is best for the future of the breed. Would you breed a German Shepard with hip dysplasia?

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Originally Posted by BChambers

We have four adult/subadult het caramels, and one nearly mature caramel male-not a kink in any one of them. they'll be breeding shortly.

I think that kinking in caramels is CLEARLY genetic. As such, any kinking (however slight) is a marker for the gene or genes that produce kinking, and IMO SHOULD disqualify that animal for breeding. I know it's painful, but if you want to be a serious breeder then you have to think about what is best for the future of the breed. Would you breed a German Shepard with hip dysplasia?

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You are right Brad but unfortunately its done all the time:(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baquu5GYyVA
By Ralph Davis reptiles.

WOW! I duno what to say about that video. :confused: Very interesting none-the-less.

if i were you and you wanted a caramel or hets to make caramels. Buy from a breeder who can show his lines of caramels dont have kinking. When i was at bob clarks i asked him that and he said he has never had a kinked caramel

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Originally Posted by West Coast Jungle

You are right Brad but unfortunately its done all the time:(

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If that is the case, then that is likely why we see so many kinked caramels. If I were to ever buy one, I would make sure that the line they came from did not have kinks.

Think of this Doc a beautiful carmel but with a dip in her back 3/4 down her body as that snake ages that kink goes deeper (i dont have and but have watch 2 of my friend over time) now think about the egg that has to pass that kink. Ball eggs arent that soft when they are laid so in my thinking the kinked female has a good chance of having trouble passing the eggs and becoming egg bound. They are beautiful but I'd only buy from a reputable breeder and then only buy morphXhet or hetXhet its the hard way but then you are only bettering it for future caramel owners. Just my 2cents

The main questions are:

1. Is it the caramel mutation it's self that causes the tendency to kink?
2. Do any breeders really produce a large number of caramels with low (near normal) percentage of kinks?

As often as caramel kinking is reported, including wild caught animals and after years of outbreeding, I'm afraid it might well be that the tendency to kink is just part of the mutation like the color and can't be bred out. If the kinking where caused by a separate gene and not the caramel mutation it's self surely someone would have separated the two genes by now and produced a kink free line of caramels.

However, all is not lost if #2 is also true. Maybe all caramels have a genetic tendency to kink but some don't, why? Could there by some dietary or incubation setup variable that can greatly reduce how often caramels hatch kinked? It might be something unexpected like an extra vitamin in or not in the rat food or a degree difference in incubation temp.

Randy-here is how I plan to handle it. If we produce any caramels with fairly major kinks, then they will be humanely euthanized. If very mild kinks, I'll let them go for a greatly reduced price into the pet market. Only perfect caramels or hets will be retained as breeding stock or sold for full market value.

I fully realize this is not a perfect solution-selling mildly kinked animals as "pets" will do little to keep them from eventually breeding. In fact, I'm considering having purchasers sign a "non-breeding" agreement, similar to those seen in the purebred dog and cat community.

It's a challenge, obviously, to do the right thing in this situation. I am encouraged that Bob Clark at least seems to have a "no kink" line of Caramels going!

Ralph's vid is interesting.
I love Caramels but I would never breed a kinked one. It seems to me that's just asking for trouble genetically speaking.

Don't know if I would put a baby down that is kinked but otherwise doing fine or keep it for a pet?? :confused:

I thought every line produces kinked animals? Bob must have a brand new line of kink free caramels!...??? That would be great.. I want caramels bad, but haven't gotten any because of the kinking.. Do any of you think that the kinks hurt the saleability (new word??) of caramels??

Alan

Apparently there is something being bred in Africa called the Crider (hope I have that spelled right) which is quite possibly a completely different mutation that just happens to look fairly caramel like but might not have the kink problems.

I don't doubt that kinking has hurt the caramel market. They where out for quite a long time before Ralph Davis posted about the issue so perhaps there where others who would have been happy to keep it under the rug indefinitely.

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Originally Posted by BChambers

If very mild kinks, I'll let them go for a greatly reduced price into the pet market.

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You better be very careful who you sell to then. There are a lot of money hungry folks out there that would snatch up a discounted "pet" caramel and breed it like crazy....

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Originally Posted by PhillyBoyInTN

You better be very careful who you sell to then. There are a lot of money hungry folks out there that would snatch up a discounted "pet" caramel and breed it like crazy....

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I realize that-that's why I posted that it is not a "perfect solution", and why I mentioned the possibility of making purchasers sign a "no breed" agreement. Obviously, no breeder can totally control what an unscrupulous buyer might do with their animals. But I personally would have big problems putting down a nearly perfect, healthy baby caramel that might do perfectly well as someone's pet.....

It's a tough issue from all sides. I have to say that I really respect Ralph for being open and honest. He is a great guy for this community and an awesome example of what we should all aspire to be.

Well, I have heard a lot about what needs to be done to produce non-kinked Caramels..

Het to Het, and Caramel to het.. NEVER Caramel to Caramel..

I plan on trying either of those (first two options) with mine this upcoming year, but anyone with more experience can chime in on this??

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Originally Posted by LadyOhh

Well, I have heard a lot about what needs to be done to produce non-kinked Caramels..

Het to Het, and Caramel to het.. NEVER Caramel to Caramel..

I plan on trying either of those (first two options) with mine this upcoming year, but anyone with more experience can chime in on this??

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I think Ralph has produced kinks from both of those options?

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Originally Posted by TooManyToys

I think Ralph has produced kinks from both of those options?

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Sure, but less likely to kink than the Caramel to Caramel option, so I've heard..

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Originally Posted by LadyOhh

Sure, but less likely to kink than the Caramel to Caramel option, so I've heard..

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I wonder if it's just a genetic flaw that came with the first W/C's brought in?

I've heard that the Malsin line may have fewer kinks.. Has anyone else heard this? I'm wanting to get hets later this year but don't know what line to get.. Should I get two different lines of hets and do it that way? Or does that still produce the same amount of kinking? Any advice will be appreiciated!!!

Thanks
Alan

I've heard drier egg boxes at cooler temps is a must for caramel eggs. :)

One question that needs to be answered is if you breed two hets together do the normal appearing offspring have a tendency to have kinks?

If we could produce that info we could figure out if the trait is attached to the the Caramel gene in its visual form or not. Also what needs to be figured out is if the kink is recessive, co-dom, or dom. If the trait only appears in visual caramels that does not mean the trait is necessarily a recessive trait. It just means it needs the altered caramel genes to pop out! This could create lots of issues as normal appearing ball pythons could be carriers of the kink as well, so breeding it out would be next to impossible. The only way to prove the gene separated would be breeding two caramels together multiple times with no kinks resulting. Then the offspring from those two would be the holy grail of Caramels as long as they were bred to other Caramels from that line. Once you breed it to a normal all bets would be off! Also once you started trying to make combo morphs all bets would be off.

As for selling a kinked Caramel (slight or not) as a pet I don't think it would be very responsible as a breeder. Breeders are the ones responsible for reducing genetic issues in a breed. By allowing an animal with genetic issues to leave your facility and out of your control you are not really making an effort to improve the breed.

Another big question or dilemma for a breeder is if you breed two snakes together and a genetic issue such as this is produced do you allow these two animals to breed together again? Do you allow either to breed again? (If the kink is recessive then both are carriers, if it is dom or Co-dom then only one could necessarily be the carrier.)

What line are you working with gloryhound? I see in your sig it says caramels. I was just wondering if your doing het to het, homo to het or what?

Thanks
Alan

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Originally Posted by Larry Suttles

I've heard drier egg boxes at cooler temps is a must for caramel eggs. :)

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Same here Larry...I've heard Caramels have weak spines and that you must incubate them drier and at lower temps...The drier your box - The less water gets absorbed into the egg which in turn puts less pressure on the spine - I've heard this theory from several breeders...My het Caramel female ovulated about 10 days ago - She has 6 nice eggs in her and that's the approach I'll be taking - Drier than usual box and cooked at 86F...The breeding was het x het (both hets are NERD line)...Wish me luck...:D

Hi,

Lots of intresting information.:banana:

Do the cooler incubation temperatures just slow everything down developmentally and possibly allow more time for corrections of any problems or just reduce the overall stress placed on the animal during growth?

How dry can you go in the incubation medium without causing other (non-caramel) related problems?

Do the eggs appear completely normal from caramel to caramel clutches?

I wondered if there was an incidental problem with how the animals handle or pass on calcium during development or egg production which could be countered using techniques learned from other species?

The information about lines that throw less kinks sounds facinating - how many years/pairings though would you need to be able to claim that with any certainty?

And of course best of luck for your clutch :D look forward to the pictures of lovely little wrigglers. :gj:


dr del

From posts I've read it sounds like about half of the imported caramels where kinked and that the normals in caramel clutches don't appear to have any increased incidence of kinking. It's really looking to me like the tendency to kink is just part of the caramel mutation and not a separate gene that could have been bred out by now.

That said, genetically I don't see how not breeding caramel X caramel could help. Say you produce a clutch of caramels and hets. Other than the caramel gene, how would keeping two of the caramels back for breeders be different than keeping two of the hets back? They are all the same amount of inbreeding. Of course we should still gather the stats and if it really does produce a higher percentage of kinks from caramel X caramel then come up with some theory as to why. Maybe female caramels are more likely to produce eggs that encourage kinking than het females.

If some breeders are producing large numbers of caramels with now or a low percentage of kinking then we need to figure out what they are doing differently. I think incubation techniques or perhaps nutrition might be the best bet for a workaround to this kinking tendency that to me seems to be just a part of the mutation.

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Originally Posted by grunt_11b

What line are you working with gloryhound? I see in your sig it says caramels. I was just wondering if your doing het to het, homo to het or what?

Thanks
Alan

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Not sure what this has to do with the thread!

Right now we are working with a Het to Possible Het. From CV Exotics. Neither are old enough or large enough to breed at this time. Since the Female is possible het but fully het for Orange Ghost we will probably breed her with our Het Orange Ghost male first. We are hoping to add a 100% het Caramel female in the future.

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Originally Posted by RandyRemington

Apparently there is something being bred in Africa called the Crider (hope I have that spelled right) which is quite possibly a completely different mutation that just happens to look fairly caramel like but might not have the kink problems.

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Ghi Reptiles has a Crider line caramel, looks almost like a caramel glow in the picture on his website.

On another note, has anyone heard of kinking appearing in crosses with the caramel gene? I had read somewhere that when you add another gene into the mix with the super cinnamon/black pastel, it doesn't end up with the duckbill effect. Which got me wondering if maybe the same could be said of the caramel albinos.

i want to know if there are kinked HET caramels?

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Originally Posted by dr del

Hi,
How would a kink in a female caramel affect her ability to breed and lay eggs successfully? Would it depend entirely on location or would complications result no matter where it happened to be?

Do the kinked parents produce a higher ratio of kinked offspring or not? It was wondering this that raised the female breedability question. :confused:

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I don't think males would have any problem breeding, females may have trouble laying eggs depending where the kinking was.

However I don't believe you'll see anyone admitting to breeding kinked animals on an open forum, the outcry from all of 'the experts' would be too deafening. :rolleyes:

Dang, I forgot to look at the date....

But in answer to the previous posters question, I've never seen a het carmel with kinks.

I personally would not breed a kinked animal if the kink was genetic. It seems to me that a genetically kinked animal would have a high chance of throwing kinked offspring.

Woops, didn't realize it was an old post.

I once saw an ad for a kinked possible het caramel. The seller claimed that het caramels tended to kink. I don't know anything about the guy so can't really say if he would just say that to try to make the case for his possible being a het but I've never heard anyone else mention het caramels kinking so it could have just been a random kink unrelated to the caramel gene. But then again homozygous caramels where being sold for years before the kinking issue ever came out publically and it was a few more years before the question of egg viability with female homozygous caramels was raised so the industry has a record of not talking about problems (spinning in spiders also wasn’t discussed on the forums until after spiders where sold for years). I guess my point is that if het caramels had a tendency to kink I wouldn't expect to hear about it or any other problem until hundreds of people have the morph and it can't be kept quite anymore. But since het caramels are widespread enough that even I have a pair now (no kinks) I’m thinking it’s a pretty fair bet they don’t kink at any significant rate or it would have come up on the forums by now.

I have a bell line male caramel that does have a tail tip kink, wjile it is not severe in any way it is still a kink and was sold at almost normal pricing 4 years ago.he has been bred with only one het caramel female which is a nerd line and in the 4 years of breeding they have never produced a kinked animal.i incubate them a little drier than normal but at mormal incubating temps. kinking can happen in any balls. my friend this year produced some spiders and normals all in same clutch all had tail kinks. i personally would not breed a severely kinked animal.

snakeRus,

What do your feeder rodents eat?

i went to a friends house and she had a rescue ball python....very sweet female, a screeeeaming obvious het something with blushing, flames, much lighter than average, and a clear belly. her spine was just gnarly though, kink after kink after kink. apparently she was run over by a bicycle and then found and rescued. so i was playing with the idea that she was a kinked het.... whether she is a kinked het or a run-over rescue, she is totally un-breedable because of her severe spinal deformities.

Does this kinking ever showed up in caramel albino morphs ? things like caramel spider or caramel glow ? if it doesnt then its probably safe to say that we could avoid kinking by not breeding caramel x caramel ?? im no expert just curious

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Originally Posted by bonsay

Does this kinking ever showed up in caramel albino morphs ? things like caramel spider or caramel glow ? if it doesnt then its probably safe to say that we could avoid kinking by not breeding caramel x caramel ?? im no expert just curious

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yes,yes,no

so it would be safe to try a 1.0 pastel carmel albino x 100% het carmel 0.1? both from same person,

I bred Pastel Het. Caramel x Het. Caramel this year and had Caramel and Pastel Caramel from this and both have kinks :( No kinks in Pastels and Normals from this clutch. Year earlier got non Caramels from this paring but Pastels and Normals where fine. Next year I will try with low temp and humidity maybe this is the clue.

Is it true about incubating caramels at little cooler temps helps with their kinking issues?

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note 2

I have a het to het pairing due to hatch on 7/17. I am incubating them at 87.5 degrees in hopes of achieving a kink free clutch with the lower temps. I guess we shall wait and see.

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Originally Posted by Got Balls?

Is it true about incubating caramels at little cooler temps helps with their kinking issues?

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note 2

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To be honest probably not.

There are very few things we, as keepers, can change within the development/ incubation process and every one of them has so far been touted as the cure to every genetic problem discovered in every morph so far.

It hasn't worked for any of them.

No matter what the problem you will see people trot out "lower/ higher incubation temps", "lower/ higher cage temps while gravid", "lower/ higher humidity in the egg box" and "supplemental feeding of the prey item"

It's not because they have done a single thing in the past it is simply because that is all they can do.

It didn't cure deserts, spiders, pearls, duckbills, bug eyes, kinks or anything else.

Eventually you realise it's all BS and greed. Depressing but true.


dr del

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Originally Posted by dr del

To be honest probably not.

There are very few things we, as keepers, can change within the development/ incubation process and every one of them has so far been touted as the cure to every genetic problem discovered in every morph so far.

It hasn't worked for any of them.

No matter what the problem you will see people trot out "lower/ higher incubation temps", "lower/ higher cage temps while gravid", "lower/ higher humidity in the egg box" and "supplemental feeding of the prey item"

It's not because they have done a single thing in the past it is simply because that is all they can do.

It didn't cure deserts, spiders, pearls, duckbills, bug eyes, kinks or anything else.

Eventually you realise it's all BS and greed. Depressing but true.


dr del

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I have to chime in to disagree with dr del here. I understand we do not have a sound statistical data set to prove that lower incubation temperatures can reduce kinking in visual Caramels, but at the same time, the lack of that data set precludes his claim that "it hasn't worked for any of them", and I do not agree that "it's all BS and greed". What I see is the generally shared view based on many dedicated hobbyist and breeder anecdotal reports that lower incubation temperatures appear to reduce the likelihood of kinking in visual Caramels. In our personal experience, we have incubated below 88 deg F and our Caramels came out great. Therefore, any time we have Caramel eggs going into the incubator, we make sure the temp is below 88 deg F. Even if we get a kinked one in the future, I will be inclined to believe that we could have had more if we were incubating higher.

Paul

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Originally Posted by dr del

Eventually you realise it's all BS and greed. Depressing but true.

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I still believe some of the reports from breeders who claim long strings of no kinked caramels. I'm not at all sure they know why it is happening but if it does happen then there must be some difference behind it and my bet is on environmental over genetics based on no reports of their customers having similar luck.

I would characterize the grasping at straws as more hope for a really nice looking morph than greed. I produced 1.2 caramels last year with only a slight kink in the tail of one of the females. I actually gave the perfect girl away but did eventually sell the other one cheap with a discussion of the tendency for caramel females to lay slugs. I'm still working this project because I was blown away by how nice they look and I still have some hope of a way to shift the odds. Even if that does happen I don't expect the price to jump back up but it would be nice to be able to confidently work with this morph without the specter of train wrecks.