popping

[Weather1]

At what age/ size can you pop babies until?

[Stockwell]

I assume you mean snakes.
I pop "evert is the proper term" babies sometimes the day they are born, however it works better after they solid up a bit, preferably after a couple weeks or after the first shed.
Neonate are often pretty soft and rubbery, and it can be difficult to get them to overt, it's therefore more likely to make an error.

With experience and technique snakes can be popped almost to maturity with some species. It depends on size. I have popped adult colubrids and Ball Pythons but most people use the eversion techniquie only on immature specimens.

[mykee]

Stockwell, I believe the word you are looking for is "invert". You try to invert the hemipenes, if they do not 'pop' out, you have a female. "popping" can be done from day one, recommended that you wiat until after the first shed, until a few months of age. I have heard of some "popping" until close to a year, but that is the exception.

[MouseKilla]

Can you really trust what you find, or don't find by popping though? I know people that pop and trust it and I know others that say it's useless to try to determine sex by any other means than probing. I don't have enough experience to trust either at my hands so I don't know who's right. Are we all left wondering if we actually know the sex before successfully breeding?

[Removed_2815]

No mykee, Roy is correct, the word he was looking for is evert (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=evert) and he used it correctly in this context.
Ryan

[Removed_2815]

MouseKilla, I think an eversion of the hemipenes is pretty solid evidence that you have a male; however, no hemipenes could mean a female or a male that didn't evert. So in this scenario you could mistake a male for a female but its unlikely to mistake a female for a male.
Ryan

[Linds]

Originally posted by mykee
"popping" can be done from day one, recommended that you wiat until after the first shed, until a few months of age. I have heard of some "popping" until close to a year, but that is the exception.

All depends on species. Some may be popped from day one, some cannot until they are several months of age... some can be popped their whole lives, some may only be effectively popped in their first year, yadda yadda... again.... it all depends on what kind of snake your talking about.

[chas*e]

Eversion(evert) is not the best way to determine the sex of a snake ...it can give false results....Probing with the proper tools is the only right way......and it is Evert not Invert..just by the prefix in itself....Roy is correctamundo