Quote Originally Posted by aSnakeLovinBabe View Post
Richard, i think you misunderstood me... I only have to pop babies. I have never had to probe a garter... that's HIGHLY unnecessary... and after a few months of age even popping is unnecessary. I don't see scale counting as necessary for me at least... because I can sex adults on sight, and babies by popping. I suppose it could be useful but I will not be sitting down with a magnifying glass counting scales on my babies when I can pop 20 of them in 2 minutes. Anything older than a few months is often accurately sexed by eye.... and even if you can't see the tail of an adult garter snake you can often tell what it is. As for neonates, I DO pop them... and always will...and here is why: Even though you can often sex them visually, it's NOT always accurate at all, and how much you can tell varies by species and individual clutch. My clutch of pugets last year was obvious. My clutch of florida blue babies... was impossible. I had a male concinnus baby that defied all odds. The FL blue baby tails were all identical. And I have one heck of a trained eye for detail... I have customers that want accurately sexed pairs, and I am not going to risk my customer's dissatisfaction by making a visual mistake when I have a definitive alternative for baby snakes. When you are attempting to build and keep a good reputation at a high profile level... you just don't attempt to sex your babies by eye. You WILL make mistakes. I have seen baby garters and thought, that one has got to be a female, there's nothing in that tail! only to have a set of hemipenes pop out. That's why I pop clutches 3 times over the course of a few weeks to iron out any errors I have made. Usually I end up finding I have one more male than I thought or something like that. For the first popping, I always do it twice, I pop them, get a ratio count, mix them up and do it again. If I get the same ratio, then I know that's as good as it could possibly get! And then I know I am good to go.... and I have not once had to apologize, or send an extra snake out at my cost, to anyone for sending them the wrong sex

(thank god, because shipping is expensive)
+1!