Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What is it exactly?? does the snake actually spin? Is it a posturing of some sort? My male normal does a thing where he twists just his head at a 90 degree angle from the floor as if he wants to see what's on the ceiling without gettin' up to go look. Maybe like he's tryin' to scratch the back of his head, but he'll sit like this for several minutes. Hasn't seemed to affect him negitively in any way, but it's strange as hell. Any clues?

I have never seen it myself and my Spider does not do it, but I hear they basically shake and twist their heads sometimes. It obviously does not impact their health and reproductive ability at all. In fact... Spiders seem to be the most prolific morph out there. I have heard of 450 gram males breeding and producing viable young. So I don't get everyone's concern. It's not like it's contagious or detrimental to their health at all. So why would you let this discourage you from owning one? Am I missing something here???

Now kinking in Caramels... especialy when you breed visble to het or visible to visible is more of a concern to me.

Oz

-----
OZZYBOIDS

All I've learned about morphs, I've learned form here in the past several weeks. I have 1 pair of normals, for 13 years now, and till I got my puter it never concerned me much. Now I wanna hit the lotto LOLOL

As long as you are having fun you can't go wrong! Good luck!

Oz
-----
OZZYBOIDS

Well, they messin' round again, so maybe this year.

By the way, I like that honey color. Beautiful snake.

Is the percentage of caramels that have kinks really any worse from caramel X caramel vs. het X het? I don't suppose there are many with the sample size to begin to answer that yet but from what little I've heard it sounds like it's just intrinsic to the morph and not caused by inbreeding so het X het wouldn't help.

Considering i am only starting with 2.0 possible het males and normal females...If i wind up with a kinked one,it will have been severely outcrossed.So either i actually hit the 1/16 odds (bad luck on top of good luck)or the morph itself is in fact the problem.

Has anyone that proved a possible het female(with a het male)had this happen?
-----
Charles Glaspie

All the people posting have never had it happen. They speculate on speculation without actual experience.Interesting how things get started !!!!!!

I think it's more interesting that we can't get a post from the people who have bred these high-end morphs and have seen the problems. Maybe it has nothing to do with the likely hood that they have some to sell and more to do with big breeders avoiding this forum in general. At any rate, with a lack of first hand information all we can do is ask questions, compare rumors, and speculate. All of which are better than going back to the silence of the first half-decade or so of each morphs public sales when potential buyers where completely without warning.

I heard a first hand report from a breeder local to me (who I don't believe posts here) and as I remember it he bred hets (the females might have even been possible hets) and produced at least two kinked caramels (one of them pretty minimally kinked). He indicated that none of the normal siblings where kinked and I don't think he produced any caramels that weren’t at least a little kinked. I also saw a post by RDR (on a different forum) that about half of the initial imported caramels where kinked.

I'm still going forward with my caramel project which I've already invested years (although less than $1,000 dollars) in. It's just that now I know to keep an eye out for anything (vitamins, temperature, humidity) that might be tweaked to try to compensate for this problem. If there is a way around it we are a lot more likely to figure it out by sharing information on what has already been tried (i.e. did outbreeding help or not?, how about dry incubation?).

I've hatched possible hets, and 66% hets so far and no kinking yet.

But as stated the kinking in question is in the homozygous animals, so I can't contribute anything new.

I hope someone with more breeding experience of Caramels will share some of their results.

Thanks
TomChambers

Randy,
just a thought. i know the vitamine thiamine (b vitmine group) and folate affect spine fromation in mammals and low levels of both vitamines are often the cause for the spinal colom not closing. you could try adding folate and thiamine to you females diet proir to ovualtion. I don't know about birth weights for caramls but if the tend to be bigger babies that could be the problem do to them being cramp in the egg so maybe a dryer incubation might work to.