Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just discovered something disturbing about one of my 10-day-old hatchlings -- I can feel three "bumps" on top of her spine, at various distances down from the head. The bumps are hard, like bone (not soft and squishy). The bumps are on top of the spine, and you can't really see them looking down at her (her body doesn't kink off to the side, but looking at her from ground level, you can see one of those bumps on her spine).

A little more info about this hatchling. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that her parents are siblings, but neither one has any kinks that I can palpate. Five of the original nine eggs in this clutch went bad about 4 weeks into incubation (I suspected at the time that the sphagnum moss at the bottom of the container was too wet). I'm incubating all my clutches in my garage (the "room temp" method) -- temps for that clutch ranged from the low 70s at night to the mid-to-upper 80s during the day (not such a wide temp range in one day, of course, but over the period of 2 months). A clutch of 12 that hatched a week earlier had zero babies with kinks. This clutch hatched at 72 days. Of the four eggs that hatched, only that one snake has kinks.

Are those bumps on the spine considered kinks?

What causes kinks to occur? Genetics or incubation temps or what?

If kinks are genetic, is the problem from a recessive gene, one that both parents must carry? If so, do you get rid of those parents?

What do breeders do with kinked babies? I would guess that severely kinked ones are euthanized, but what about the slightly or moderately kinked babies?

If you choose to let a kinked baby live, will it face kink-related health problems down the line? If it's a female who gets bred, will the kinks interfere with egg-laying?

Has it been proven that a kinked adult produces kinked babies?

I want to be a responsible breeder, so if this one kinked baby has brought to light a genetics problem in my collection, I need to know what to do, not just with the baby but with the parents as well.

Please help. I would appreciate any and all comments from breeders who have experienced a problem with kinks. Thanks in advance for taking the time to respond.

Liz

Hi that is a deformaty somtimes you just get some like that once and a while.

.....they are usually temp related.........some go away more or less..most do not....I kill most that have kinks or sell really cheap or give them away...depends on my mood and what morph they are..and the fact that my friend needed all the baby corns he could get to start feed baby king cobras.....

anyways....

bad stuff I threw in with my turtle......(only 3 this year)....

....little kinks will hurt nothing but appearances.....

they can still live and breed and all...

usually they don't sell........

.......I have a fluorescent amel female...dwarf...4 bad kinks....and she lays great ,nice ,big fat eggs every year.....(she was just too pretty to kill.......).....

.......have fun.....

and just let people know it's kinked......if you sell it.....or give it away........
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Hi, Jeff. If the problem is due to incubation temps, why aren't all the babies deformed/kinked, since all the eggs experienced the same temps? That's what's got me thrown here -- just one out of four is kinked, and the entire clutch that hatched the week before (at the same temps) is all fine (12 non-kinked babies). And that's why I'm wondering if it's genetic.

Just curious -- has your little kinked amel female ever produced kinked babies?

Liz

don't know.........

thought was always that temps too high will cause kinks....(over like 86)...and temps that go up then down then up again all the time will cause growth spurts and kinks at high points....

so...

I get kinks alot.not all the time ..but some years are bad...

last year even I had enough......temps went up and down as normal......and that's the thought /problem...

so.this year....temps went down to 79 and up to 90 at times.......and.......I have only 2 kinked that I see so far...maybe 3......I forget.......

.....?...not temps?????maybe not......

genetic? maybe....but not the way you think....same snake will not throw kinks all the time....yet same snake may throw kinks more than normal.....

weak sperm?..........probably not.....

......they just pop up.....

as for same temps..yes...I have boxes all on same shelf..and some ..even in same box..will all be perfect...others a bunch of crappy......and even the hatch dates will vary from 56 days to 65 days more or less........

add another thought...?...wild birds..ducks for example..they used to incubate eggs all at same level all the time.like at 102 or whatever is correct.....now they are finding out that they get alot better results if the temps go up and down all the time..like a night cool period......(*saw it on TV.they have wild duck eggs in a box at zoo and they monitor the temps all the time..and have their own incubator setup to be the same as the wild eggs...and they hatch more .....(and probably better ) babies))........

.......

it's all a game of chance maybe.....

so...temps.....genes......parents health........all play a role......

have fun....good luck....feed well...but not too much.....

JY

bedtime...............zzzzzzzzzz
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I plan on doing an experiment in '06.... cross all my "keepers" from this year's hatch (all had kinks and deformities, I'm only keeping the strongest 7).... see if I get kinks or deformities from breeding kinked or deformed babies. Got 5 females, 2 males, it's a good mix to keep.

I think it's not genetic.
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~Sasheena

That sounds like a good idea, although I know it will be heart-wrenching if the babies turn out kinked. However, there doesn't seem to be a real consensus on whether kinks are genetic or not -- instead, it sounds like most breeders don't keep kinked babies, and they all recommend NOT breeding them, so nobody really seems to know for sure. So if your breeding experiment indicates that kinks are not a genetic trait, then maybe we can figure out exactly what type of environmental/incubation conditions DO cause kinks. Then we can all avoid those conditions.

I am also planning to keep my little kinked baby. She's one of only four hatchlings from that clutch, and she's an odd-looking little salmon-colored hypo motley of some sort or another (which I was not expecting at all, since both parents are normal red motleys with no visible signs of being hypo or het hypo). I am also going to keep at least her lilac-looking ghost sibling (and maybe the other two, which appear to be regular red motleys, one of which is brighter than the other). In fact, I may try to do the exact same experiment, although none of her three siblings are kinked, and I really don't know what sex they all are (I don't know how to probe -- but surely the four aren't all the same gender). In fact, now that I think about it, that may be a good thing -- to have both of us breeding kinks from two separate lineages.

It seems cruel to deliberately breed kinked corns, but I don't see any other way to prove or disprove the theories about kinks being genetic, and someone needs to do it. Might as well be us. At least I also have Cal kings, if all the babies turned out kinked/deformed.

Liz

It does seem cruel. I would probably not breed them until later in the season, and if they bred, they bred, if not, that's fine. Part of the point of this is that I would have late hatch corns, and early or normal hatch kings.... if I have kings with difficulties feeding, I would have corns (kinked babies) I could find useful. It's DIFFICULT to even THINK of such a hatch as I had already, but I really would like to know if it is genetic. If I breed two kinked babies and get kinked babies (when unrelated corn eggs incubated simultaneously under similar circumstances are hatched without kinks) I'll know it's genetic.

My basic plan is to cross two partially related corns.... same father, different mothers, both with very mild kinks. If I get kinked babies and am pretty sure it's not environmental, then I will know it's genetic... I'll retire the parents of all the kinked offspring. If I get all unkinked babies, I will conclude that it is environmental and that it has not affected those snakes. The hope I have is that my babies from this year, in a few years, will be robust beautiful genetically unblemished adult snakes.

In any case, I've had 2 or 3 of them eat so far. The rest will hopefully catch up. I won't even have a future experiment until I get these guys eating.
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~Sasheena

you'll get alot of normals and not sure about kinkeds....

example.....

the fluorescent amel female....origionla..she threw kinked all the time...so it was semi-genetic.not all ,,just some of her kids...

now..her kinked dwarf daughter.....I think she throws all good babies and not one kink....

reason......she has been bred to a huge caramel for the 2 years I bred her...crossed lines and crossed genetics...better het babies..big..eaters....

he is gone...she will have a new boyfriend next year?.maybe his brother ..amber.....?...well...naaaaah..I need more amels....she'll just get an amel of some sort....

JY
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There are a few so severely kinked that they can't even hatch. And some with such mild kinks that I don't notice them until I am handling them and feel it with my hands. And of course, some with moderate kinks that you can see, but don't affect their apparent health. Some lines seem to produce more kinks than others. But I sometimes get them when crossing two unrelated lines together, sometimes lines that never produced many kinked babies in the past.

The worst year I ever had was the year we left Glades Herp (1996) and I had to incubate all of my eggs on the back porch. IT WAS HOT OUT THERE!! I got kinked babies from bloodlines that never produced many problems before or since.

I think there is both a genetic component and an environmental one. Maybe some are more genetically prone to it, and a little less than perfection in incubation causes them to kink. Maybe some have the genes to kink no matter the environment. Maybe a whole clutch has perfect genes, but the eggs on top got a couple of degrees hotter than the ones on the bottom, and it was enough to cause kinks. I don't really know. But because it COULD be genetic, I don't breed any that show even the slightest kinks. I freeze most and sell or give away as coral snake or kingsnake food. If it is a very mild kink, I may give it away or sell it cheaply as a non-breeder pet quality animal. Of course, somebody may breed it anyway - too bad there is not a cheap way to neuter them. Seems a shame to euthanize them if they could live a fairly normal life as a pet, but it is also a shame for them to contribute to the gene pool with what could be genetic deformities.

I can tell you that most of the kinked babies change as they grow - some have gotten much better and some have gotten much worse as they mature. You won't know until they start to grow.

Good luck!

Thank you, Kathy, for taking the time to give me (and anyone else reading this thread) your input. I value and respect your insight as a longtime breeder.

So, do you think there's any merit to a deliberate plan to breed kinks to kinks to see if there is a genetic component. For instance, if there is a kink gene and if it is a recessive one (and surely it must be, or else we'd see a whole lot more kinked babies), then if Shasheena breeds kink to kink, all of the babies should end up kinked, right?

Do you know if anyone has ever done this, to try to answer these questions about kinks?

Liz

I think it is a lot more complicated than a simple recessive, all or nothing trait like, say, amel. You can get kinks all over the body and tail, and they can range from almost invisible to severe. I do expect that breeding related kinked snakes to kinked is likely to produce a lot of kinks. My guess is that it will work a lot like zigzag / aztec breedings - a high degree of variable amounts of ziggyness (or kinks) from related animals showing the traits, but not complete. In zigs, concentrating the traits for several generations brings it out more fully, and I suspect the same would be true for kinks. And if you breed unrelated zigs together, they may or may not throw a high degree of zigs - I have seen my strain "compatible" with some other strains, yet throw 100% normals when bred with different strains of highly zigged snakes. I suspect the same may be true of kinks, although I certainly don't want to work on finding it out myself! I have more than enough to keep me busy, lol!

Somebody like Paul Hollander or some of the other academic members who frequent this forum may be able to discuss the whys and wherefors of the genetics better than I can.

I think that there is great merit to a deliberate plan to breed kinks to kinks to see if there is a genetic component. Such a plan would have to control for environmental factors such as nutritional deficiencies, of course.

As far as I know, people have theorized but never done any testing. So we know little more now than when kinks first started appearing.

Paul Hollander