Shed went well . . . and more questions

Monty shed last night - and it went perfectly. That skin just came right off. My son is very excited to take the skin to school today! Monty looks amazing, I can't believe how bright and shimmery he is. I took some pics but haven't downloaded them yet, will get to that later. I had a great idea and measured his skin - 19" long and about 1/2" across. I really thought he was bigger around. Is that accurate? Afterwards I realized the skin might have stretched or shrank, but I measured about 10 minutes after he was out of it.

Anyway, here's my burning question. Because I've had questions about his colors I was looking him over really good last night and noticed that his tail tapers off abruptly after the vent. As I said, from the skin he's about 19" long, and the store I got him from said he was about 5 months old, which I question too. How old/big do they have to be to determine their sex from the shape of the tail? Or do all hatchling's tails do that and I'm just paranoid?

Actually, you can sex a corn as young as a few weeks. Since he's a little small, what I would suggest is trying to pop a hemipene. Its pretty easy to do. Grasp the snake with the tail up. With your thumb, apply some pressure behind the vent and slide the pressure slowly upwards towards the vent area. It takes a little practive but since he is still young, his muscles should be weak enough for you to pop a hemipene (if its a male) Don't exert too much force since it is possible to harm them. If you're still not sure, I am willing to best that if you take him to a reptile shop or any pet shop that has a reptile section, they would be willing to probe him for you.

i personally would trust the average pet store with probing MY snakies, but if you have a particularly knowledgeable one, than they may be able to do it.
My suggestion would ber a herp vet, if you have one in your area.

Just wanted to say congrats on the sucessful shed!

Measuring the shed skin is not all that accurate, Sienna's last shed was nearly two inches longer than she actually was...this one was a little over two inches longer (I guess she really stretches them out as she pulls them off). I just discovered Serp's snake measuring program and its a breeze. I would say that is probably the easiest way to get an accurate measurement on Monty.

Also, I'm really excited because Trogdor went blue today! This will be his first shed with us!

Ok maybe im wrong about this but I was told that you can count the scales behind the vent to determine the sex. 110 to 120 was female, 130 to 140 was male, and 120 to 130 was either. Can someone tell me if this is right.

KatieL said:

Just wanted to say congrats on the sucessful shed!

Measuring the shed skin is not all that accurate, Sienna's last shed was nearly two inches longer than she actually was...this one was a little over two inches longer (I guess she really stretches them out as she pulls them off). I just discovered Serp's snake measuring program and its a breeze. I would say that is probably the easiest way to get an accurate measurement on Monty.

Also, I'm really excited because Trogdor went blue today! This will be his first shed with us!

Click to expand...

I'm not sure about this because Mojo has yet to shed with me, but I've always read that if you subtract somewhere in the area of 10% of the shed length, that will give you a ballpark figure on the actual length. I want to try Serp's program out too, but it might be interesting to try both ways and see how they compare.

And Wolf, if you can hold your snake still long enough to count that, I salute you...

Wouldnt you just count the scales on the shedded skin. Have never tried it personaly. I have just been told that it works.

Never really thought about counting it on the skin...that makes sense though. I dunno, I've never heard that, but it may be true. I would think there would be quite a variation in number and that it may be a good "probably" way of telling, but I don't know about a fool-proof definitive answer. I'm interested to see if anybody has any experience in using that as a guide.

The scale counting came up in another thread a few months ago and I believe that it was determined to be another "probably" method of telling the sex. I guess the only way to truely tell would be probing...or if you popped it and saw a little hemi.;-)

Jeff, I tried your subtract 10% thing, and it was fairly close...it ended up being off by about half an inch. That seems pretty close to me, so I guess that is a good ballpark indicator. Very interesting.

Hmmm . . .

Monty was popped at the petstore. I didn't look. The guy said "I think this is a boy" but he seemed unsure. So I asked if he was sure and he said no, but he thought he saw something so it was probably a boy. I'm not sure what I should make of that. :shrugs: He's still digesting, I might try popping him tomorrow, but I certainly won't force the issue as I really don't know what I'm doing. I thought about it and decided the only reason it would matter is if I wanted to breed and if I did I probably wouldn't get another snake til next year anyway and by then we could tell by his tail. It just surprised me to see an extremely definate tapering/shortness to his tail, it looked like the pics I've seen of females. Then it dawned on me that maybe all baby snakes' tails look like that. I tried counting the scales, but at the end the are VERY tiny, it gave me a headache. LOL :eek1:

So at 10% off 19 inches Monty would be about 17 inches? That was about what I got when I tried to measure him with the tape, but he was wiggling all around and I wasn't sure. Again, not a huge issue, I'm just curious. What is the snake measuring program?

KatieL, I know you're excited that Trogdor went blue! I'm sure his shed will be fine, you'll have to let us know how it goes. I was really shocked that day when Monty went blue, he scared me to death! I fed him right after his shed, I'm waiting for him to digest, I can't wait to handle him. He's so soft now!

BTW, that brings up another question . . . do you have to wait the whole 48 hours to handle them if they poo before that? I mean, is doing their business a reliable indicator that they have digested? I thought I'd read something about that, but I don't recall exactly.

Thanks everyone!

Here's Serp's program

http://www.serpwidgets.com/Apps/apps.html

I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard good things

I use Serpwidgets program every week, works great! Its very easy to use and can be very accurate. Here's a pic of my last measurement(March 02):
<a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/ddotspot/CottonBall/03-02-05.jpg"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/ddotspot/CottonBall/03-02-05.jpg" width="80" height="60"alt="Click Here" border="0" ></a>
Click to Enlarge

All you do is first set the measurement(make one point at one end of the ruler, and another at the other end)

And then you make points along the back of your snake and it determines the length(no matter if your snake is twisted or not) according to your initial measuring standard. You can use my picture to test the program if you like. You should get somewhere around 18.8 inches(the ruler is 12")

Great idea Serp!!!

Oh, and on the poo thing...in my honest opinion I would still wait the 48hrs, its better to be safe than sorry. It could be that because of the feeding intervals, that your seeing leftovers from the PREVIOUS feeding. I've noticed that mine usually staggers her poo's.