Genetic "flaws" associated with various morphs?

[bigballs]

you guys are right. i did a search again and i made a mistake. ed clark is the one who had some issues with shipping animals packed with parasites. bob clark has no bad posts on his name.

ive never dealt with either of them.

for this reason you shouldnt be posting any experiences that you have read about them. let the customers who have actually dealt with them feel the responsibility to speak up.


anyways, a question:

if trainwreck spiders can produce regular spiders and regular spiders can produce trainwrecks i would assume that the degree of wobble or spin that the offspring may experience is a random occurrence.

non-kinked caramels can produce kinked caramels so if kinked caramels are bred to each other is there a higher chance that the offspring will also be kinked?

if kinking in caramels is random like the degree of spin and wobble in spiders and the degree of white displayed in piebalds then shouldnt it not matter if you were to breed kinked caramels as you would have similar chances of getting non kinked offspring as you would with getting regular spider offspring by breeding trainkwreck spiders?

[rabernet]

for this reason you shouldnt be posting any experiences that you have read about them. let the customers who have actually dealt with them feel the responsibility to speak up.


anyways, a question:

if trainwreck spiders can produce regular spiders and regular spiders can produce trainwrecks i would assume that the degree of wobble or spin that the offspring may experience is a random occurrence.

non-kinked caramels can produce kinked caramels so if kinked caramels are bred to each other is there a higher chance that the offspring will also be kinked?

if kinking in caramels is random like the degree of spin and wobble in spiders and the degree of white displayed in piebalds then shouldnt it not matter if you were to breed kinked caramels as you would have similar chances of getting non kinked offspring as you would with getting regular spider offspring by breeding trainkwreck spiders?

Julian,

I'm not sure if the kinking can be compared to the randomness of spider wobbling severity and pied white. I believe that it is more genetic, and so I personally wouldn't breed a kinked animal or one that came from a clutch that expressed kinks.

Anyone who has worked with caramels, can you comment on it?

[Lucas339]

[QUOTE=bigballs;943163]for this reason you shouldnt be posting any experiences that you have read about them. let the customers who have actually dealt with them feel the responsibility to speak up.[QUOTE]


very true...thats what the BOI is for.

[RandyRemington]

IMHO I agree that it looks like inbreeding is not the cause of kinking in caramels or even the problems with super cinnamon/black pastel.

RDR stated once that about half the imported caramels where kinked. If the kinking where caused by something other than the caramel mutation its self surely by now someone would have outbred enough to create a line without the problem. Initially trying to cull kinking out was a good idea and still might find some further mutation or some combination of other genes to get around the problem but I don't think it's going to be nearly as effective as it would have been if the kinking where caused by a 2nd gene and passed on by inbreeding which most seem to think. I suppose it could even be a closely linked 2nd gene where breeding hets might break the link but it seems more likely to me that whatever chemical abnormality the mutation causes both makes the caramel appearance and gives caramels a strong tendency to kink. At this point maybe we should be looking at environmental factors that might influence which caramels kink badly and which don't as a way to work around the problem.

With the super cinnamon/black pastel I've yet to hear good confirmation that breeding unrelated animals has helped with the problem. There was one poster on kingsnake recently that claimed it had but his evidence was based on seeing more good supers lately which could be the same odds as all along but just with more players now. I'd like to hear comments from people actually producing large numbers of supers as to what percentages are like and if they are seeing anything to improve those odds. The one very limited experience I have is seeing a clutch briefly a couple years ago with two supers. One was kinked and duck billed and the other looked fine to me but the breeder thought it had a little duck bill. You don't hear much about the kinking but I understand that is also common in the super cinnamon/black pastel. Few are willing to talk about problems or show pictures of deformed animals so it's really hard to get a feel for how common they are. I was told that the parents of these two where from unrelated lines but I don't remember the lines or if one was a black pastel. Weren’t the first two supers from the black pastels? I remember seeing comments from people who had seen them at a show that they had considerable snoot problems. But again, some seem much better and possibly perfect so if we could find the variable perhaps it could be used to greatly reduce the problem even if the tendency is part of the mutation like I suspect and can’t actually be outbred.

How many possible homozygous spiders have been produced and bred out is something I would love to know. NERD has posted information like "enough" to know there isn't a visually different super and that they didn't notice any increased incidence of bad eggs. I did hear from TSK that they are breeding spider X spider starting I think it was in 2007. I don't have access to the details right now but seems like it was several clutches and they didn't report noticing any different offspring. They did report a number of small eggs that didn't hatch that was close to 25% but the sample size wasn't big enough to prove that wasn't just a typical rate of duds. I believe they intended to breed spider X spider again in 2008 but I haven't seen if they did and of course as pointed out testing all the possible homozygous animals would be a big undertaking even once they are grown. I've also heard the rumor of someone having a proven homozygous spider but that bags the question as why they are unwilling to come forward with the animal.

Bottom line, I think spiders our outbred enough with relatively few attempts at inbreeding to produce a homozygous spider that the wobble almost has to be an example of a sporadic side effect of the mutation it's self and if spiders prove that possible then why couldn't it also be the case for caramel and super cinnamon/black pastel? Sure in one case you are talking hets and in the others homozygous but it seems like sporadic expression can happen in either.

[envy_ld50]

My super cinny is perfect. You have to see solid colored balls in person sometimes their heads look weird without the pattern.

[Wh00h0069]

on his site he shows a albino with a pretty bad duckbill and it states that it was kept alive. for him this would be a less expensive animal.

again i should state that im in no way defending ralph or anything. im just saying i say the kinked carmel video and a post on his stie about the duckbill albino.

Just because he is keeping an animal alive does not mean that he is keeping the animal. How do we know that he is not selling them for less?

[Wh00h0069]

I certainly dont see a need to cull an animal that lives, eats, poops and sheds like the rest of my animals, however I do wonder when these deformities start to hurt the animal, and when it is no longer humane to keep them alive. How could I tell that the animal was in pain?

That's my whole view on it, luckily I have never had to deal with the task of deciding what is best for a deformed or sick animal that can't express it's unease.

I have cull two hatchlings. It was a hard decision, but one was severely deformed, and the other was born with no eyes. I chock it up to a power outage while they were incubating. I hope I will never have to make that decision again, but it is always a possibility every year.

[Wh00h0069]

you guys are right. i did a search again and i made a mistake. ed clark is the one who had some issues with shipping animals packed with parasites. bob clark has no bad posts on his name.

ive never dealt with either of them.

Man, I did also. I am sorry to Bob Clark. It was Ed Clark that I was referring too. I have never heard anything negative about Bob Clark, but I have about Ed.

[Slim]

I am starting to feel (as many other breeders do) that there never was a problem with the noses on Super Cinnamons and Super Black Pastels. I feel it is an optical illusion caused by the dark head color of the animal.

The duckbills I've seen both in person and in pictures were NOT an visual illusion. The snakes were very tweeked. If it were a visual illusion, all Supper Cinny's would look that way, but the fact that normal looking ones do exist invalidates the visual illusion therory.

[Albey]

The duckbills I've seen both in person and in pictures were NOT an visual illusion. The snakes were very tweeked. If it were a visual illusion, all Supper Cinny's would look that way, but the fact that normal looking ones do exist invalidates the visual illusion therory.

I am sorry but I don’t believe you, and I disagree with you whole-heartedly. Show me these pictures or direct me to the animals that you say look like that.