Learned how to POP them- and question and a POPPING tip!

[mtolypetsupply]

Finally got my Florida blue babies to pop! I''m pretty happy about it! In the end, Ernestine had 7.6! Pretty even ratio! I *KNEW* they weren't all girls! LOLOL!!!!!

For those of you who can't get them to do it or have never tried before, I have to say, I had to push on them way harder than I originally thought I would.

Now here's the tip: Their cloaca and genitalia seemed much more relaxed and cooperative after a nice little soak. If you have uncooperative babies, throw them in some water for a while, and try again.

In addition, the babies are now slipperier, and you'll HAVE to hold them tighter. So you'll get more pressure without even trying!

Now, I can't get my radix babies to even relax enough to pull back the vent scale. No swim helped, nothing. Is it they're older and stronger? Just need to get them to relax more? They sure aren't cooperative!

[guidofatherof5]

Now, I can't get my radix babies to even relax enough to pull back the vent scale. No swim helped, nothing. Is it they're older and stronger? Just need to get them to relax more? They sure aren't cooperative!

It's modesty:D

[BUSHSNAKE]

i told ya youll get it, i bet ya think its easy now

[GarterGeek]

Is it normal to get some white/clear liquid that looks like poo to come out when popping?

[MaritimeGirl]

Is it normal to get some white/clear liquid that looks like poo to come out when popping?
yes. thats them musking you. My baby corns would do that to me while popping

[ConcinusMan]

And then there's the other 5 or so that are actually male and wouldn't pop.:rolleyes:

Look at them carefully and trust your eyes. Popping is deceiving. It can confirm suspicions that a snake is male, but it can't rule out that it's actually a male that won't pop. I would separate the one's that popped from the one's that didn't, and call that group male, but I wouldn't take that as evidence to confirm that the others are all female.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

And then there's the other 5 or so that are actually male and wouldn't pop.:rolleyes:

Look at them carefully and trust your eyes. Popping is deceiving. It can confirm suspicions that a snake is male, but it can't rule out that it's actually a male that won't pop. I would separate the one's that popped from the one's that didn't, and call that group male, but I wouldn't take that as evidence to confirm that the others are all female.

Popping is much more trustworthy than you think. If you can I have YET to have sent out a mis sexed baby snake to anyone. Popping is not deceiving. It's very accurate. I maybe miss one in 50 babies the first try, and get it right the next time.

[Jeff B]

I would agree with you Shannon.
It's good to go back 2 or 3 times after birth say every week or two and check just to be sure. Sometimes of the little runt males take a few weeks to become hung enough to get a good pop. Popping can be very accurate especially if it's checked and double checked. This year I got a little lazy though and had a snake that I thought was female and I never went back and rechecked, since I was planning on keeping her, but then I ended up selling her, and I always double check sex before a shipment goes out, sure enough she was now a he, lessoned learned, always double and triple check the sex over the period of several weeks.

[Spankenstyne]

I definitely need popping practice with these guys. So are you sliding the thumb tip up towards the vent with pressure from near the tip of the tail or placing the thumb and sort of rocking the thumb up without moving it? I've always been more of a visual sexer, palpater, & prober than a popper. I've always been worried about crushing someone's hemis lol

Probing has it's problems too with males clenching to appear female and the need to be gentle to avoid going too far while a squirmy little captive is doing everything it can to stop you from probing it. I'm not sure which is less risky with these guys.

[Jeff B]

I pop garters the same way I do corns and ball pythons, just a lot smaller scale obviously, so you have to be more careful, but to answer your question, I first bend the tail backwards to open the vent then roll my thumb up the tail to the vent with my index under the back of the tail and my other thumb above the vent roll it just slightly towards the vent as well, when the two thumbs get close the hemipenes pop out, but some times it helps to roll several times starting soft and then each roll increase pressure just a bit to kinda coax out the hemipenes, each roll they will come out further, so by the 3rd or 4th time there is no doubt that you have a boy because his hemipenes are fully inverted. Hope that helps.
Interestingly Joe Peck and I were talking about it today on the phone and we have both noticed differences among individual males for sure, both size and shape, so not all hemipenes will look identical, but tiny little red spots or tiny bumps are just female sex glands that sometimes get squeezed out. I would say an average hatchling garter snake hemipene is 3/16 to 1/8 inch long by 1/32 to 1/16 inch wide, and they usually pop out at about 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock angles out the side from center of the vent, hope that makes sense?

[Spankenstyne]

Makes sense. I've always relied on other methods but after 22+ years into the hobby it's about time I man-up and get better at popping these guys lol. I have no problem probing most stuff but the smaller garters make me paranoid that I'll finally mess up.

[ConcinusMan]

Now I see that Shannon and Jeff have defended the popping as reliable and I'm sure that's been their experience. I'd love to send a male or three their way and see if they can pop them. Nobody has been able to do it, even those as confident and experienced as you guys are. And here I am with a male named "Amy" that was sexed by popping, or rather the lack of anything popping out at all. Now this is a snake I would have sexed visually as male. I even thought so when I first got him and he was just a few months old. Since this was my first radix and sold as a female, I doubted myself, but sure enough, it's a male. I don't need popping or probing to confirm that. Amy is definitely a male, coming into sexual maturity, has the tail and even a slight bulge after the cloaca as males do. Now i have another that is sold as male, but is so small still, that I can't even constrain him, let alone pop or probe, without fear of hurting him, but even as small as it is, I suspect female.

[BUSHSNAKE]

your saying that Don Belnap unaccurately sexed 2 snakes he sold to you but your method of sexing is looking at them...as adults thats ok but i know your talking about babies...its very offensive what your saying about Don and if someone sent me a snake that was sexed wrong i would deal with it with them PERSONALY

[ConcinusMan]

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that one snake was inaccurately sexed and that I could tell by looking at it, it's obviously male. I'm also saying that popping obviously didn't work in this case, and that yes, I could tell by looking at it that it was male, even as a baby because I suspected male when I got it. Sure enough, it is.

I did deal with him personally, but I still don't have a larger 2009 female albino (since he obviously doesn't have one) which I had planned to breed to a smaller 2010 male so that plan is shot to hell and it can't be made right. Now why would you get offended by this problem being transparent? I mean, if a person has a problem and writes a negative review of a product or service, do you get offended? No. You would want to know about any problems people have had with a retailer, or business before dealing with them, wouldn't you? I'm still a little ticked off about this. However, other than this, my dealings with Don have been mostly positive and I would, and have, done business with him again. He's having a bad year and he has made every effort to make things right but like I said, I don't have a larger 2009 female so there's only so much that can be done.

Anyway, so this year, I traded good snakes, for a 2010 male, still going on the assumption that the 2009 snake was a female. I'm looking at this 2010 "male" and it looks to me to be obviously female but we'll see. You're saying visual only works for adults but that's bunk. The differences between male and female, visually, are there even as babies. Just a few minutes ago, I received 3 2010 possible hets from Don. They're good sized and in apparently good health. Just by looking at them, one is obviously female, the other two, male. Go ahead and debunk my method of sexing them. To me, it's obvious and plain as day.

These snakes are all fine and dandy, but I still don't have the kind of match I was planning on and I'm not happy about it. Would I do business with Don again? probably. I just wouldn't let too much ride on it again. Now if you find that offensive, too bad. Any breeder who does business basically in public needs to expect criticism where it is due.

BTW Don, the possible hets look very good and my end of the bargain will go through.

I'm sick of tip-toeing around trying not to offend people on this site. You're mostly all too dang sensitive. If you're offended, I don't really give a damn anymore. I have not attacked anyone personally.

[adamanteus]

Personally, I think it's quite simple to sex baby Garters visually. That's what I always do (because popping scares me!), and I only occasionally get it wrong.

[Stefan-A]

I'm inclined to agree, it doesn't take long before it is obvious.

[ConcinusMan]

Thank you both. Finally someone agrees. I have notice though, that if it isn't obviously female to me, and I'm kind of not sure, those usually turn out to be males.

[BUSHSNAKE]

id feel terrible if i sold someone a snake that wasnt the sex they wanted, so why not learn to accurately sex snakes with a method that is very very very easy and cut your chances of being wrong...i eyeball em too but then i pop to be 100% sorry for having high standards

[Snakers]

In my opinion I think if you can tell the snake's sex visually that is the best, but popping I think is more accurate then most think. although popping doesn't scare me as much as probing

[adamanteus]

I'd feel terrible if I sold someone a snake that was damaged by popping. Not a rare occurrance in my experience.
When I sell babies I offer a 90% certainty of sex. If the buyer wants to pop, that's his call.

[Snakers]

I'd feel terrible if I sold someone a snake that was damaged by popping. Not a rare occurrance in my experience.
When I sell babies I offer a 90% certainty of sex. If the buyer wants to pop, that's his call.
That would definitley be worse than a wrong sexed snake.

[BUSHSNAKE]

poping garters is harmless, if you damage a snake by sexing it then you simply dont know what your doing, plain and simple

[adamanteus]

Yeah, I guess I need to learn what I'm doing.

[Snakers]

poping garters is harmless, if you damage a snake by sexing it then you simply dont know what your doing, plain and simple
Exactly! but if this person is inexperienced then it can lead to damage.

[BUSHSNAKE]

at some point we are all inexperienced but learning from each other is easy, Scott Felzer taught me how to pop and its a very useful tool

[ConcinusMan]

I'd rather avoid popping or probing altogether. I mean, c'mon.. it's not necessary with garters at all. Most of them are obvious by visual cues. If you are unsure, then sell them as unsexed. That's my opinion.

[kibakiba]

I sex based off looks now, when their small like Runt, who isn't much bigger, if not smaller, than a newborn(not lengthwise) its hard to tell. But with others, like Snakey and Mama you can tell obvious differences. Even right now I can kind of tell that Runt is probably a female, though he remains a "he" until I can confirm it ;) with regular sized babies it would be harder I can imagine but still possible.

[The Snake Whisperer]

With my Eastern garters, I find that I don't usually even have to actually pop them, just opening the cloaca a little usually shows me whether a baby is a girl or boy. A girls cloaca will appear whitish and a boy's will appear pink. I've been able to sex adult Easterns easily this way.

I've also found out when I experimented with this on my adult corns, I can tell my male adult corns from my females as well. Also often you can see the thickening below the cloaca of a male and feel a difference between a male and female when gently feeling the sides of the area just below the cloaca. The male's hemipenes will cause that area to feel very different from that area on the female, it feels obviously different, thicker and harder and more dense.

When I tested this, it proved true for my female Cali King too and my female Black Rat Snake.

Tested on a young adult garter of unknown sex, I guessed it was male and he proved me right by letting me find him fastened to one of my females at the tail one day. These snakes were not brumated yet boy proved he was definitely a boy and they both proved brumation wasn't absolutely necessary when that female subsequently had a litter.

[BUSHSNAKE]

im gonna put your color method to the test and gonna let you know how it goes i hope it doesnt dissapoint

[ConcinusMan]

Color? never heard that one before. But you're right, males generally are "harder" in that area of the tail but that's difficult to determine when you're talking about very small babies. I can generally tell just by the shape and length of the tail, even with newborns but if that fails one thing remains constant. T.s concinnus males have more scales south of the cloaca than females. Counting those scales on snakes you're not sure about, never fails. Males simply have more scales on the tail than females - every time.

[BUSHSNAKE]

looking at em, feeling them, molesting them, give it a credit card, counting scales, holding a crystal over them i think ive heard it all now...good greif

[guidofatherof5]

looking at em, feeling them, molesting them, give it a credit card, counting scales, holding a crystal over them i think ive heard it all now...good greif

I just ask them.
If that fails I check their driver's license.:D run a 29 on their SS#:D

[BUSHSNAKE]

there ya go!

[Jeff B]

Joe, I see that this thread hasn't given you any enlightenment or closure, but rather more frustration, lol:D

counting scales on a tiny new born garter?.....Yeah I'm sure thats much faster and easier than popping, I wonder why more snake breeders don't do that?
Joe, you nucklehead how come you never thought of that?

You should call up all the giant big name snake breeders or even big colubrid breeders and suggest to them that they start doing that, I'm sure they would think thats a great novel new ideal, and thank you for educating them on the risks of popping and they would probably adopt that methods of sexing and stop popping immediately.:rolleyes:

Cmon' people popping is easy, it's easy to learn, it's safe, you can safely and easily learn by trial and error on your very first litter, and it's VERY effectively accurate if done two or three times during the first few weeks.
Thousands of snakes are accurately sexed via popping every year, and garters need not be an exception.

[Snakers]

Joe your phone is off... sorry I had to:D(random mid conversation statement)

[Jeff B]

lol,Now thats some funny **** Nolan, lol:D
Joe, you probably deleted my phone number from your phone now because I called you a nucklehead, huh, lol even though nobody under 60yrs old has ever heard the term,lol

[kibakiba]

lol,Now thats some funny **** Nolan, lol:D
Joe, you probably deleted my phone number from your phone now because I called you a nucklehead, huh, lol even though nobody under 60yrs old has ever heard the term,lol


Ah, hey! I'm 22 and I've heard the term knucklehead quite a lot. My mom calls me a knucklehead all the time. :p
I might also add that shes under 60... Not by much though.

[BUSHSNAKE]

hey Jeff you can call me what ever you want but i draw the line at hyrid-lover, that deserves a kick in the ---

[ConcinusMan]

OK, mud-blood lover then?