I still wonder if there might be an environmental tweak that could decrease both your chances of slugs and kinks. Would be interesting to know if the few breeders who have reported long strings with no kinks also get more eggs than slugs. The tweak could be something accidental and hard to nail down like feeding rodents that either have extra or lack normal levels of some vitamin that relates to whatever the caramel mutation is changing in the caramel ball's chemistry.