Posted by:
dbherp
at Wed Sep 24 17:51:45 2008 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by dbherp ]
Someone brought up my kinking issue below and I think had confused me with Dan Wolfe at dwherp due to our similar user names. I thought I would post an update and share what has happened thus far.
For anyone who missed the previous post, when my first babies started pipping this year I was greeted with some small deformities/kinks in their tails. I am now through 6 clutches and I'd say 80-90% of the babies have some form of abnormality. Some aren't visible and you can only feel a slight raised spot when checking with your finger. The Lesser and Super Pastel pictured below have the worst deformities of everything I've hatched out so far. The rest are somewhere in between those examples. The one consistent thing is that all of these abnormalities occur opposite the cloaca and down toward the tail tip. No babies have had any kind of irregularities above the cloaca.
The clutches were from four completely unrelated morph males (Fire, Lesser, Cinnamon and Bumblebee) to five unrelated normal females and one Pastel female. All the males, excluding the Lesser, produced for me last year and I had no problems whatsoever until my last clutch of the season(more on this below). Some of the babies produced this year were identical to 2007 pairings that produced flawless babies last year and kinked babies this year.
I talked to numerous breeders as well as having multiple members of this forum email me with input. I appreciate all of the suggestions I've gotten but so far the culprit escapes me. The incubator is the first thing that I assumed as well as many others. My last clutch of 2007, a very late clutch, gave me 3 perfect babies and one Firefly similar to my 2008 babies. I assumed this was just an anomaly and shut down my incubator for the year. After this started happening I've triple checked my temps (Helix, digital thermometer on the shelves, portable probe in the egg boxes) and they all are within normal ranges. I tried incubation on vermiculite as well as the no substrate perlite and had no different results. Someone suggested a possible nutritional deficiency in my feeder rodents but I'm using a well known company for my feeders and if this were the case I think there would be many more people with this issue.
A friend of mine locally has loaned me his incubator as his season is now finished. I'm incubating my last three clutches in his unit (I also moved clutches that were still in my old incubator into this one). I'll be sure to post once those clutches hatch out to see if I can find a solution.
These babies all feed fine and appear completely healthy aside from the obvious. I'm going to be selling them and I was curious to get some input on what price people think they're worth. I was thinking 50% of market value would be a fair price but I'd like to hear opinions before I list them for sale. I think I've basically ruled out the possibility of it being genetic so what would you pay for an animal with a small deformity?
Here are the kinked Lesser (smoker!) and Super Pastel with the worst kinks. Please excuse the rough shed spot on the Super.
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www.dbherp.com
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 My kinking problem - updated with photo - dbherp, Wed Sep 24 17:51:45 2008 
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