Feeding responses and the ability to thrive is dependant on the indvidual snake...which in turn is completely independant of the color morph.
Consider, first, that an okeetee is technically a normal, line bred for the thick borders. There is no such thing as "het. okeetee", because the okeetee traits are not simple recessive genes. Same with miamis. The difference between an amel and an RO?...line breeding for thick white borders. The difference between a bloodred and a normal?...simply the color genes.
True, a "young morph" may have issues relating to feeding and/or aggression that are developed along with the color combinations. But I believe that these issues will resolve themselves within a few generations and a widening bloodline/genepool from which to choose, because I believe that these issues develope as a direct result of thin genepools used to creat the morphs for the first couple of generations. Once this genepool has been widened and deepened through outcrossing and combining the recessive gene, these issues *should* be thinned out, too.
The reason? These issues will probably develope when the parents of a new morph-line show these traits or tendencies. These negative traits than get passed on to the offspring along with the desirable traits...until the bloodlines are thinned enough that the negative traits(which are not simple recessive genes) are dissipated and thinned out...leaving behind only the desired traits of the morph(which are passed on through simple recessive genetics).
For example: Rich Z. discovered the first "caramel" in a pet shop. If this initial animal had feeding or aggression issues, those traits would have a high percentage of being passed on to any offspring that snake produced, regardless of the fact that ALL of the F1 offspring were normals. As those offspring are bred back to the same adult...the negative traits are reinforced in the F2 generation. When F2 offspring are back-bred to each other...these negative traits are further reinforced.
However...once the caramel corns from the F2 breeding of the original parent are sold and outcrossed by different breeders for their own caramel bloodlines, these negative traits disappear. So what is technically F3 or F4 from the original parent snake, becomes a clutch of normals from an outcrossed parentage by a completely different breeder, and mixed with a completely new bloodline, thus thinning these negative traits out of existence in their bloodline. However...there has now been 5-7 years of "bad rap" for this morph based on the limited bloodline and experience people have had from them. ALL of the first 2-3 generations(or more) of the caramel morph came from the same place and the same parentage. It is only reasonable to assume they have the same tendencies.
Obviously...that is over-simplified, and I made it up. I don't know that the original caramel line had agression or feeding issues, it was just a line that I knew was started from a single homozygous animal in one place, and it is a reasonable example of how 1 parent exhibiting negative traits alongside a recessive color trait, would produce offspring showing the same negative traits for the first few generations of offspring, but eventually thins out the negative traits, which are not passed along as reliably or consistantly as a single recessive gene combination.
