If kinking isn't genetic . . .

. . . then what is it?

Right now, after the results of one of my breedings this season, I find it very hard to believe that kinking isn't genetic. In 7 years and just over a 1000 eggs, I have had to euthenize exactly 8 hatchlings due to kinking from a snake that successfully exited the egg. Six of those eight came this season, from one pairing. :shrugs:

All of my eggs each season have been incubated in the same medium, in the same conditions (temp and humidity) in the same incubator any given year. If kinking were due to incubation conditions, I think I'd see a bit more of it . . . though I've worked hard to avoid high moisture content which has been thought to be the culprit. I would also think if it was incubation conditions, and it was going to happen that it would be spread out across more than 1 clutch because all my eggs are in "one basket" so-to-speak.

The thing that really puts the kicker into this for me is that this season, my female double clutched. In her first clutch there were 5 kinked hatchlings. Her double clutch which just pipped this morning contains a 6th kinked hatchling. That seems to be a bit beyond coincidence?!

:shrugs:
D80

You didn't say what the morph of the kink parents are. The only kinked snakes I have ever had have been lavenders. Every one.

I think in some cases kinking can be the result of the incubation environment, and then in some cases kinking can be the result of genetics. Because their's no way to be 100% sure if the kinking is genetic or environmental, I am of the opinion they should be euthanized (and in fact, that is what I do).

I have seen kinking in cornsnakes other then Lavenders, so I really don't think it's a Lavender only kind of thing.

I had several kinked and DIE hatchlings this year...out of a clutch of 17 I only got 5 live hatchlings, one of which is kinked. Of the other DIE 12...lmost all were kinked. I used nearly 100% humidity during incubation as the eggs were somewhat sealed in a gladware container in the incubator....I wish I had known

wade said:

You didn't say what the morph of the kink parents are. The only kinked snakes I have ever had have been lavenders.

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These aren't Lavenders. Even more peculiar is that of the 6 . . . they're all Lava's.

TripleMoonsExotic said:

Because their's no way to be 100% sure if the kinking is genetic or environmental, I am of the opinion they should be euthanized (and in fact, that is what I do).

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I personally think my results are pretty darn sure on the genetic angle . . . but, I think there's other situations where it may be a result of environment. :shrugs: I euthenize any kinked hatchlings as well, but maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I should start raising them up, breeding them, and testing for a genetic indicator so we can identify those that are carrying a "kinking gene" . . . :sidestep:

Drewby07 said:

I used nearly 100% humidity during incubation

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High moisture content and 100% humidity would actually be two completely different incubation conditions. You can have 100% humidity without having highly saturated incubation medium (which would be a high moisture environment).

D80

OOOOH ok...well the medium was just damp...I thought I was doing it right. I think kinking is genetic. This same pair produced 22 eggs last season...and there were at least 3 kinkers then...and more DIE. Coincidentally the male died suddenly about 6 weeks ago. :shrugs:

I think kinking can be genetic, but most of the time is due to incubation/health of the female. I have had kinked females have perfectly great offspring, even when breed to siblings. I have had perfectly great snakes throw one kinked to a mostly kinked clutch. 6 to one, half a dozen to the other. There really is no way yo know.

Drizzt80 said:

Maybe I should start raising them up, breeding them, and testing for a genetic indicator so we can identify those that are carrying a "kinking gene"

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The ones I had were kinked bad enough that I doubt the females could have passed the eggs. I put them all in the freezer and sold the parents to some kids as pets (non breeders).

I think it is genetic however. Or at least the tendency for kinking.

So you say that you euthenize kinkers? I suppose I can understand that, as they will probably have a tough life..

I am curious though, how do you go about doing that? I'm not trying to criticize or look down on this practice, but I am expecting some babies here shortly and have NO CLUE what to expect. I pray that all of mine are healthy, but (as I am sure you know) we can't always get 100% so I need all the knowledge I can get right now.

When I hatched out my fist kinked hatchling I wasn't sure what to do at first, so I let it shed, fed it, it ate, it pooped and seemed to be very happy, but I wanted to know if it was in any pain or if it could make someone a great pet. I took it to my vet who looked it over and said it was fine and should make a good pet. My vet is also a reptile specialists, not just a vet. I had several very nice candy canes that had slight kinks or bumps on the spine and ate great. I still sell them, but only as pets. I don't think I could ever put them down, but I definetely understand not breeding them. I think an experiment would be interesting. If I had a whole clutch or even half that ended up with kinks I would just retire the breeders as pets.

kocorns said:

When I hatched out my fist kinked hatchling I wasn't sure what to do at first, so I let it shed, fed it, it ate, it pooped and seemed to be very happy, but I wanted to know if it was in any pain or if it could make someone a great pet. I took it to my vet who looked it over and said it was fine and should make a good pet. My vet is also a reptile specialists, not just a vet. I had several very nice candy canes that had slight kinks or bumps on the spine and ate great. I still sell them, but only as pets. I don't think I could ever put them down, but I definetely understand not breeding them. I think an experiment would be interesting. If I had a whole clutch or even half that ended up with kinks I would just retire the breeders as pets.

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Look at it this way...

How, with 100% certainty, do you know those buyers didn't breed the kinked snakes or sell them to someone else?

That is why I am in the euthanization side. I prefer only providing healthy animals into the cornsnake gene pool...Their is no guarantee, unless you keep that snake for the rest of its life, that it's genetics will not eventually be spread.

I didn't mean to start a debate but it would seem to me that if the animal can eat and drink and functions perfectly normally.. then why would you NOT want their genetics in the pool? I mean, pretty isn't everything...

My original question still wasn't answered, but if you don't feel comfortable answering it I can totally understand and respect that ^_^. I don't really need to know anyway, I was just curious.

Jadie.Glitch said:

I didn't mean to start a debate but it would seem to me that if the animal can eat and drink and functions perfectly normally.. then why would you NOT want their genetics in the pool? I mean, pretty isn't everything...

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Because you would be passing on a deformity...Kinking is not something good that should be reproduced.

If you want to look at it on the "warm and fuzzy" side...How do you know with 100% certainty that the animal is not suffering in anyway? Reptiles aren't like cats and dogs who can express pain.

Jadie.Glitch said:

My original question still wasn't answered, but if you don't feel comfortable answering it I can totally understand and respect that ^_^. I don't really need to know anyway, I was just curious.

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Freezing or crushing the skull.

Jadie.Glitch said:

I didn't mean to start a debate but it would seem to me that if the animal can eat and drink and functions perfectly normally.. then why would you NOT want their genetics in the pool? I mean, pretty isn't everything...

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Because probably, what you see on the outside is only half the story. If there is a visible deformity, who knows what could be going on on the inside. It may be a happy pet, but a deformed animal should have its genes removed from the pool.

My season was a disaster, and kinking was a big part of it. I have serious doubts about a genetic cause (with the possible exception of lavs), because I've had the same pairs lay perfect clutches in one year, and lots of kinkers the next. Seems like strange odds for a genetic factor. And the parents of this year's clutches were from MANY different snake lines.

This year I incubated almost all clutches in very small incubation containers. Prevailing wisdom seemed to indicate that you prepare a clutch, then leave it alone for most of the incubation period. I think that I starved many clutches of oxygen, causing horrible hatch rates and high incidents of deformity. I think if you're going to employ the "prepare 'em and leave 'em alone" strategy, then you'd better do so in large incubation containers, and you'd better at least do weekly or semi-monthly checks for air exchange.

Like I said, lavs may be an exception. It seems that from what I've read, there are comparable genes to lavender in other species, and deformities are not uncommon in offspring of those species. Even Rich Z. has cited lavs as being problematic (I'm too lazy to search for the thread right now).

All I can say is that for the most part, I lean toward environmental conditions during incubation as being the the most common culprit for spinal deformities... :shrugs:

IMHO it can be both. Until I outcrossed my Lavas, I had a few kinked animals in each clutch for a couple years.They were hatched in the same environment as the rest of my clutches. :shrugs: Lavenders are also very prone to this.

Jadie.Glitch said:

I am curious though, how do you go about doing that?

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I put them in a deli cup in the fridge overnight, and then the freezer the next morning.

kocorns said:

I still sell them, but only as pets.

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Once any snake leaves my care, I have zero control over what is done with it . . . both good and bad. In the case of "gene pool" decisions, I prefer to take on that responsibility and make that decision myself. I'm fairly practical when it comes to that. As Kathy has once been noted saying (something similar anyway), Mother Nature "euthenizes" many, many more animals than I ever will. :shrugs:

Now you Mr. Deano have gotten me thinking . . .

Roy Munson said:

I have serious doubts about a genetic cause (with the possible exception of lavs), because I've had the same pairs lay perfect clutches in one year, and lots of kinkers the next. Seems like strange odds for a genetic factor.

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These two lines got me thinking about conditions NOT related to incubation. Namely, conditions when the eggs were "incubating" after fertilization but before being laid. That is a variable that I can not recall nor compare at this point. This could be the environmental factor that I'm missing and therefore will sway me towards re-breeding this pair next season (I am/was very seriously contemplating NOT breeding the same pair.).

Roy Munson said:

This year I incubated almost all clutches in very small incubation containers. . . . I think if you're going to employ the "prepare 'em and leave 'em alone" strategy, then you'd better do so in large incubation containers, and you'd better at least do weekly or semi-monthly checks for air exchange.

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For the most part, I do use the prepare 'em and forget 'em strategy. I use small incubation containers that have one 1/8" hole melted in the side. My incubator is an on-end cooler that does have holes drilled into it. I open the cooler in the early stages of the season, at most, once every other week or so just to check for mold on the papertowels. Once hatching is expected, the cooler itself is opened every other day-ish. I don't open the containers themselves unless I'm expecting a clutch to hatch or there's growth on the paper towel and I want to double check for growth on the eggs. It's definitely not a "zero" oxygen environment, but it's not necessarily a high oxygen environment either. :shrugs:

Roy Munson said:

All I can say is that for the most part, I lean toward environmental conditions during incubation as being the the most common culprit for spinal deformities.

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In this experience for me I'm going to have to respectfully disagree where "incubation" means I've taken the laid eggs and put them in the incubator . . . but it does bring up a logical extension of when does "incubation" begin?!

D80

I think sometimes it is genetic and sometimes it isn't. In one particular season, I got a ton of kinked snakes from pairings that had produced perfect clutches before and have produced perfect clutches since. In my experience, too much moisture, too much heat, and adding too much moisture when eggs are already a few weeks old will all increase chances for kinked babies. If it is all genetics why would I breed a pair for years and get perfect babies and then one year get almost all kinked?
I also believe you can even section out further the genetic part. Maybe some are just genetically wired to produce a malformed baby no matter how perfect the eviornment is. However, I expect that it is more likely that some are just more genetically sensitive to too much water/heat than others.

I've generally used the same method of incubation for years, with some variations in moisture/humidity and temperature. I use roomy containers and have always checked the eggs periodically, plus use air holes, so oxygen deprivation has never been an issue. I've also had some years with virtually no kinked hatchlings and a couple of years with more. Thinking back, heat spikes may be partially responsible, as is the moisture/humidity level. But there may be even more to it than that. Genetics may be a possible culprit in a few cases, but I don't think it is in most of the cases we have all had.

The worst clutch of kinked hatchlings that I ever had was one of the very first clutches I ever produced. At least half the clutch had kinks, some very severe. The female was a first-timer and on the small side (I thought she was large enough at the time, but without a scale and larger snakes to compare her to, I now know she was too small). That pair later went on to produce kink-free hatchlings for the remainder of their reproductive lives. What I think may be a potential cause is the condition of the female during ovulation, fertilization and egg formation. Most importantly, the nutritional condition of the yolk produced that is going to feed the hatchling during it's development, especially the calcium and phosphorus content in the yolk. If you have a female that may not be in the peak of condition, for any reason, but probably due to slower recuperation from last year's egg-laying or a younger female that still requires more nutrients for her own development or something along those lines. We all have seen those eggs with the "windows". Insufficient calcium deposition in the eggshell is only one symptom of something not 100% optimal in reproduction. Something lacking in the yolk that results in poorer spinal development which leads to kinking may be another. For those that keep much better records than I do, it may be worth looking into to see if perhaps the female who produced some kinked hatchlings this year may have double clutched last year, or was a little slower to recover than in othet years, or just didn't put on as much condition this year when compared to last year, or may have been a little off in her meals at some point, anything they may affect her ability to supply everything she would optimally need to the production of 100% healthy eggs. Just a thought.

Carol and Susan, great additions of information from both of you. Thank you. In just this particular case, my incubation is the driest (no premature dimpling and I still had some condensation on the sides) it's ever been and no heat spikes that I was aware of (my digital thermometers have high and low memory). This particular female didn't produce at all last year even though I attempted to breed her. There were also no slugs last season from her.

I do like the direction more and more of the ideas and thoughts are going. One thing I have kinda dropped by the wayside is that I used to inject vitamins into mice about once every other month. Nothing particularly measured (much as you'd dust crickets), just dissolved in water and then injected before feeding. Maybe that affected this particular female as well.

So that now leads me to another possible culprit in this particular case (in my guesstimation). In addition to possible negative "incubation" conditions of the female prior to egg laying there's also the possibility of vitamin mineral deficiency of this particular female prior to egg production.

D80