While caramels are not known for duckbills, I have seen one. I believe this was due to too much line-breeding, inbreed any animal enough and you're going to run into problems. The other caramel the guy had looked physically normal, but given the deformity in the sibling I had to question the genetic diversity/quality of his breeding stock. I know I won't be getting anything from him in the future.



Now, until recently, caramels did have a problem with kinking. Most of what you see now are small kinks at the end of the tail, though some of the bad ones can be mid-body. If you want to see an example of a badly kinked one, RDR has some video demonstrating this. I have also been warned by a local breeder to watch out for any caramel babies missing the tip of the tail, apparently some bad breeders will nip off a kinked tip so that the baby looks fine... so, as with anything, caveat emptor.



I think that any recessive trait is going to have some problems to work out until a diverse enough gene pool is established so that inbreeding doesn't create any physical deformities. But, as Kyle has so beautifully shown with this combination of lines, I don't think that this should be an issue with caramels anymore.
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Allison



1.1 normals

1.1 yellowbellies

1. pastel DH albino clown

1. DH caramel glow

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