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Kinking solved ???

ForkedTung

ForkedTung

Serpent Mound Monk
I found this quote on another site and it was attributed to a well known breeder of cornsnakes. This is the first I've heard of this. Does anyone know anything about this claim and is there any validity to it?
4) Cornsnake breeders have uncovered that excessive moisture content in the medium during incubation causes kinking in baby snakes. Over the last four years, we've reduced kinked snakes to perhaps ten or twelve this year (out of some 1600 hatchlings), as opposed to many dozens in years past. We've used the same principle to reduce tail kinks in gecko numbers as well.
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Thanks, Kyle
 
I've certainly seen high humidity during incubation suggested as a potential cause of kinking. Don't think it's a established fact yet, but it's certainly worth considering if you have an issue.

As Stars says, heat spikes have also been mentioned, as have heredity/genetics.
 
4) Cornsnake breeders have uncovered that excessive moisture content in the medium during incubation causes kinking in baby snakes.
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Interesting! I stumbled on to the situation this last summer. Except my experience was the opposite of the quote above. One of my egg bins in the incubator had excessive moisture in it. All the babies hatched out with no problems in fact they were the biggest babies I ever hatched. I make note of it in this link. Clutch #4 http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86337

I have plans to recreate the same "experiment" with one clutch this year to see if it was the excessive moisture or not.
 
I would like to see alot more testing on this theory before calling it a proven fact. Just because they've decreased the number of kinked hatchlings in 4 years (reduced, not eliminated, by the way) doesn;t mean they've discovered the answer. It can also be attributed to just plain luck as well. I've had several years without producing a single kinked hatchling, changing nothing in my incubation methods and then having kinked hatchlings the following year.
 
Susan said:
I would like to see alot more testing on this theory before calling it a proven fact. Just because they've decreased the number of kinked hatchlings in 4 years (reduced, not eliminated, by the way) doesn;t mean they've discovered the answer. It can also be attributed to just plain luck as well. I've had several years without producing a single kinked hatchling, changing nothing in my incubation methods and then having kinked hatchlings the following year.
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I would like to see alot more testing on this theory before calling it a proven fact.
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I agree, I've never had a kinked, but my egg bins tend toward the dry side anyway.
 
There could be something to this. I think a lot more needs to be done as far as recording data.

In my experience, the only kinking I've ever experienced is with lavender based morphs. They seem to be more prone to it IMO, so I do think that there is possibly some mild genetic influence as well as environmental factors. I, too, would be interested to know who this is and if they're on this board to chime in with more details (i.e. what humidity they incubate at, what they used to incubate at, what substrate, temps, etc).
 
Not in my experience...... :nope:

But then again, perhaps I have never had ANY of my eggs excessively moist.
 
What are we considering excessively moist? I do substrateless incubating over a little bit of water in a sealed container. Without the eggs actually being wet, I'd think that's about as moist as you can get. Is that moister than average?

I have had one clutch with a lot of kinking one year--it was a lavender clutch and I had a lot of trouble keeping the eggs cool enough that year--but my other clutches have been fine.
 
I don't want to put their name out there yet because this was from an OP quote on the BOI and was attributed to the breeder, I do not know for sure that the breeder actually sent this email to the OP, so until the breeder responds to the BOI post and does not deny sending that email I would prefer to leave their name out of it ( although it does appear that the breeder in question did in fact send this email to the OP).
 
I don't think it's a major issue whether or not we know about the source. It's a valid observation that has been made before by other people.

However, from other posts that I've read over the years, I doubt that humidity is the only factor; to make a blanket claim that kinking can be resolved only by lowering humidity, is probably overstating it a bit.

It worked for the breeder in question - and more power to them. It's certainly worth taking account of.
 
I had a lot of kinks in my early years of breeding. I am sure I was keeping the eggs too moist. I would often mist them every few days. The eggs would get pretty large and never cave in before hatching (they still rarely do here). I heard the theory going around about eight years ago so I reduced my moisture and saw a HUGE drop in kinked snakes. I have seen clutches by the same pairings have many kinks in high humidity be perfect once I realized what I was doing wrong. The same is true on years I had heat spikes. The quote isn't from me but keeping my incubation med less moist dramatically reduced instances of kinks.
Now I tape up containers and only mist maybe once or twice the whole time they are incubated. If they were shelf incubated I'd imagine I wouldn't have to mist at all.
 
desertanimal said:
What are we considering excessively moist? I do substrateless incubating over a little bit of water in a sealed container. Without the eggs actually being wet, I'd think that's about as moist as you can get. Is that moister than average?

I have had one clutch with a lot of kinking one year--it was a lavender clutch and I had a lot of trouble keeping the eggs cool enough that year--but my other clutches have been fine.
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Well if you use sphagnum moss like myself, you really have to wring every last drop of water out that you can. Otherwise I'm pretty sure it's humidity would still be higher than air over water, even in a sealed warm container.
 
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