Quote Originally Posted by mikeandsheleen View Post
...he won't tell me!!
That sucks! I mean allowing more kinked caramels to be produced to keep a perceived competitive advantage. Thing is maybe if a breeder knew how to 100% prevent kinking in caramels letting the info out would more than offset increased competitor production with better caramel demand. But even if it does make economic sense to keep such a secret I think it's wrong not to prevent suffering of the kinked hatchlings in other collections.

I've heard of keepers with long strings of no kinks before. To me it comes down to two possibilities:

1. They are lying to make their caramels more marketable.
2. They are doing something different that overcomes the kinking tendency in caramels.

I'm discounting the third possibility that they have a kinkless line by some sort of luck or outbreeding because if that happened you would see ads from their customers also having seen no kinks.

I've heard a few of these reports from breeders I trust so I think there must be a way around the kinks even if some might be stumbling on it by accident and might not even know themselves the real reason why they don't get kinks. One of the ideas I've wondered about is if certain rat diets either provide a nutrient that is essential due to the nature of the caramel mutation or don't have some nutrient that caramels can't tolerate. Wish I knew the answer as this will be my first (long) shot at caramels got 2012.