YAY!!! I did it!!!! I finally can sex my babies!

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Today, I was looking at all of my florida blue babies, whom were born on saturday. ALL 20 of them took a small fish off the tongs yesterday, a great number in my opinion!

Then I realized that I needed to sex them. I have always been a look at the tail and guess person, but I hate doing that. So I decided it was time to pop. Something which I had tried a few times but never mastered. Many people have shown me how to do it before... "it's so easy" they say, "just be gentle but firm" they say...I have always been scared of hurting them but tonight I felt confident that I am entirely used to handling tiny baby garters by now and I know my limits. I picked one up.... gently flipped over the tail and applied some gentle pressure... nothing but poo. Is it a girl.... or did I fail?

Next.... still, nothing.

Next.... after my third try (he was wiggly and poo-ing all over) I saw something!!! So I let go for a second and tried again... and pop! There they were! Two microscopic hemipenes! I was so excited! I finally had learned how to sex my baby garters! I proceeded to sex 5 more and all of them were males. It was starting to scare me.... then I found a female! I came up with 8 females and 12 males.... how do I know if I did it right?

I put them all back together and left them alone for a while. Then I tried again.... I came up with the exact same numbers!!! Hooray!!! This may or may not sound like a big deal to everyone else but I am very happy that I am now able to actually sex my babies!!!

But just a side note: popping is only to be done on baby snakes. It's never 100%. don't try this at home unless you are highly expierienced in handling tiny snakes, or any snakes for that matter, and you know your limits to applying the pressure! Don't do it unless you actually need to know the sexes of the snakes... no need in harassing babies you are going to be releasing! I would not recomend trying this out until 1.) you have physically watched someone else (and a few different people) do it a few times to both male and female snakes explaining what they are doing 2.) you are comfortable and confident in your abilities to repeat what you have seen. There are fine lines between not enough pressure, enough pressure, and too much pressure and seriously injuring/killing a snake. The last thing I want to happen from this thread is for everyone to look a their babies and decide to try and pop them when they have no idea what they are doing...

I just thought it'd be neat to share that I finally built up the confidence and expierience to sex newborn snakes.

[zooplan]

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Shanon!
Thats better than 1000 posts!

[snakeman]

I was watching a show on the golden lanceheads on some island.The scientists were popping adults.I don't know whats up with that.anyway nice job!

[infernalis]

Good job Shannon

Advancing in your obsession is awesome

[jitami]

Well done Shannon! It would be a big deal to me, too!

[Snaky]

Well done.

This year was also the first year that I popped my babies. It as very easy with concinnus and marcianus.... but now I had to pop cyrtopsis and I got all females Anybody else experiencing the same thing, that it's more difficult with some species then with others?

[drache]

that is really cool, Shannon - congrats
I haven't tried it yet - my vet always did it for me
maybe my are babies too old anyway