• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Popping pressure

princess

princess

Cornaholic
Once again I have a clutch with a ridiculously good sex ratio. Of my butter/amel clutch I have what looks like 10/10 females with 3 of them showing half millimeter long pink projection at best. Most people would be glad for this but I have customers waiting for 1.1's and I wanted to keep a butter 1.0 for myself so what can I do???


Are those ½mm pink bits actually hemipenes and I'm just not squeezing enough???? I don't want to overdo it and hurt/injure the little darlings...plus, I'm getting sick of getting pooped on!!! :rolleyes:

I just can't seem to expose those great big, long hemipenes like demonstrated in Kathy's book.....I am trying though..... :shrugs:


Any advice would be great.
 
A trick for lightly colored snakes which aren't too far past hatching:

Hold them up to the light. When they're really young, they're somewhat transparent, and you can often tell by looking at the tail what gender they are.

Caution: Do not hold the snake directly against the light, just hold them at an angle so their internals are illuminated.

This trick typically only works with hatchlings of very light or amelanistic coloration.

-Kat
 
Yeah, I have a bunch of butters and amels to sex so that would work for them but I want to be sure so I'd like to pop as well if I can. If people are giving me their money, I don't want to hear from them in 2-3 years that they bought 1.1 and got 2.0...it's happened to me and seriously stuffed up my plans so I know the frustration and don't want to do it to anyone else.
 
Generally I pop them at about a week old and mark down all the males. I pop the "females" again at about two or three weeks old and mark down all the females that are NOW males. I don't pop the males again~ if I saw a hemipene it's not going to go away later! I pop again just before I am ready to market them~ and any that are STILL female I advertise as female. Then~ just before I box them up to ship~ or put them in the buyers hand~ I pop them again just to be sure.

I figure if I popped her 4 times and never saw a hemipene~ then I can be reasonably sure it's a girl!
 
Yep that's what I've been doing pretty much but I can't believe my tecnique is so bad that I'm missing all the boys!!
 
I don't know what your technique is, but I find many people push way too close to the vent. With popping, you are trying to build up enought pressure in the tail to exceed the pressure keeping the hemis in. It doesn't take much pressure, it's more technique. If you start rolling your thumb a good ways back from the vent with a goal of the end of your thumb just reaching 4-5 mm back from the vent, that's about perfect. You don't want to be putting pressure directly behind the vent opening, you won't build up pressure to push the hemis forward that way, you'll just squish the delicate organs. If you put a little pressure much further back in the tail, it pushes fluid and blood forward and pushes the hemis ahead of it, everting them. Babies take very very very little effort...in fact, I just popped a subadult recently with hardly any effort, and that snake weighed probably 80+ grams (just enough to see the hemis start to evert.)
{disclaimer}
Please note that this is just an example of how little pressure it really does take. I wouldn't recommend fully everting an older snake due to risk of prolapse. Probing is much safer, and kids... don't try this at home.
{/disclaimer}

Good luck!

For what it's worth, in my experience if you see dark pink/red starting to evert...it's a boy that didn't pop well. When I try him again, hemis appear. Girls I can evert the caudal scent glands and they will evert about 1 mm, but they've always been white, not pink or grey. The girls' tails also feel more firm, like there's nothing to squish there. You start to feel it after a while.
 
OK well I fed the majority of the babies 4 days ago, so I should be able to handle them later today without giving them a tummy ache! I'd better re-check though. And Hurley, thanks by the way for that excellent description, I'm quite confident that I have been doing it the right way...I've been starting from about 1cm back past the vent and rolling my thumb up...Well, back to getting pooped on today then!!
 
FREAKING WHOA!!!!!!

I just re-popped my baby butter of undetermined gender and that thing nearly took my eye out..hehehe

There's absolutely no doubt that one's a boy!!! It seemed to pop out almost too easily with very little pressure and the same technique I've always been using...ah well that's life.

I've misplaced my 'Love Manual' so when I find it I'll read that bit on sexing again so I know I'm doing it right every time.
 
OK, so I admit, I must have been doing something wrong in the past. I just discovered one of the aneries is a boy and so is my amel mot. I was so disappointed when I initially saw that my little amel mot was a girl...I was sooo hoping for a boy and now...6 weeks on...It's a happy day!! :crazy02:

I think I'm getting better at it, perhaps a few years of practice will help...what an excellent excuse to make more hatchlings!!!! :cool:
 
princess said:
FREAKING WHOA!!!!!!

I just re-popped my baby butter of undetermined gender and that thing nearly took my eye out..hehehe

There's absolutely no doubt that one's a boy!!! It seemed to pop out almost too easily with very little pressure and the same technique I've always been using...ah well that's life.

I've misplaced my 'Love Manual' so when I find it I'll read that bit on sexing again so I know I'm doing it right every time.
Click to expand...
LOL.. :laugh01:
 
I've misplaced my 'Love Manual' so when I find it I'll read that bit on sexing again so I know I'm doing it right every time.
Click to expand...

Me too Tom! :roflmao:

(Sorry, I've never heard of it referred to as a 'Love manual' before)
 
ok... im having this problem also.... but what is confusing me is the little "red spots".. when I purchased one of my corns from the petstore they popped it right there in front of me... I seen no hem. but they told me it was a boy because it had the little red spots...

well later when I went to purchase him a friend I had him popped again.... still the red spots but the guy told me he is a girl.... and I popped him/her again today using the technique here and it does seem to be a girl BUT it still has red spots... there is a pronounced buldge in the center with a red spot on either side... I thought that girls didn't have the *red* spots...

I guess it is time to invest in a probing set ... but that doens't help me with the little guys...

I wish I could take photos but I cant pop and take pics at the same time... lol
 
The little red spots are the female scent glands, 'femoral pores'.

I'm getting plenty with the bulge in the middle flanked by 2 red dots but I'm also getting a bunch that have the little pink dots on 'stalks' that are only ½mm long, barely as long as they are wide. The jury is still out on what those ones are!!!
 
princess said:
FREAKING WHOA!!!!!!

I just re-popped my baby butter of undetermined gender and that thing nearly took my eye out..hehehe

There's absolutely no doubt that one's a boy!!! It seemed to pop out almost too easily with very little pressure and the same technique I've always been using...ah well that's life.

I've misplaced my 'Love Manual' so when I find it I'll read that bit on sexing again so I know I'm doing it right every time.
Click to expand...

Something about the thing popping out... almost taking her eye out (didn't mama tell you it might do that) and then heading for the "love manual" and then later after referring th "The Manual" you now realize that whatever it was you were doing... you were doing it wrong...
too much material... too little time. :grin01:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top