is it a boy or a girl?

[jwsporty]

Hey folks,
I need your help on this one. Recently I had Grant ship me a set of probes. I started my probing experience on one, being careful to use a probe of the appropriate size, not too small and too large. I also tried on both sides( anterior of the vent) of the snake to make sure I was getting a proper reading. By all rights I have determined it is a girl, however it does have spurs on either side of the vent. Now, on one website, they said it is easy to tell the sex of a BP, if it has predominant spurs then it is a male, if the spurs are considerably smaller then it is a female. The question is, this test animal has predominant spurs, yet I can not push the probe in past 2 scales. Am I doing something wrong, do I need to be pushing harder or am I reading erroneous information. Incidently the prob set I picked up from Grant at PCPC is the 6 piece set,(2 very small probes with a ring loop on them), one medium size with long taper, one medium with a taper to a ledge, and then then two larger ones also with a taper to a ledge. Made in Pakistan in a red case. I used the medium with taper to a ledge. If it is a male should the prob slide in to the 7-8th scale with no resistance? I am comfortable with the process but at the same time I don't want to be doing this on a regular basis or pushing too hard as to stress or hurt the animals.

This is not a do or die sutuation, this is just for my info so I can start shifting my purchases to the right sex animals for future projects. I do have a guaranteed male in a corn snake that I can use for comparision purposes but is there a major difference between cornsnake and BP sexing and the readings?

Your help, as always, is appreciated.

BTW...Happy Canada Day !!

Thanks
Jim

[BoidKeeper]

Ignore the spur thing....I do anyway. If it goes in two to four then its a girl, not a boy with small spurs or a girl with big ones or any of that jazz. One thing to keep in mind is that there can be retained skin in there sometimes or in the case of a male sperm plugs so make sure the opening to the hemipens/glands are not pluged with anything.
Cheers,
Trevor

[Linds]

Spurs are completely unreliable unless you are sexing erycines (99% of the time females don't have spurs at all), since often females will have spurs the same size or larger than males. Especially in BP's, females often have similar sized spurs to males. You won't want to compare different species either, since different species probe different depths.

[Colonel SB]

Spurs are not a reliable sexing tool, probs are the best way to go.

[jwsporty]

Thanks Trevor and Linds,
That was the info I was looking for. I will make sure there is no blockage and re-probe.

Jim