>>So I bought a pair of Western hogs last year. Upon purchase, they were sexed by looking at their tail lengths, with one baby, presumably the male, having a noticably longer tail than the other.
>>
>>I probed them both today and they both appear to be females, only probing approx four scales deep. I have been feeding the 'female' a little more than the male, so she has the longer tail now, but I think that is only because she is bigger.
>>
>>Can babies with different tail lengths at birth be the same sex? Thanks for any help.
>>
>>Ross
Well, there can be two issues here. First off, there is no guarantee that visually sexing any snake, let alone hogs, by tail length is foolproof. While it can be a good means of determination, especially in hognose, genetics can play a larger role in causing individual animals to have physical attributes that exceed or alter the expected normality. Therefore, it is also imperative to back up the visual sexing with probing which is also not 100% foolproof.
Probing can be a far more reliable method than visual determination, but if you are not using the right sized probe or not hitting the direct spot for the hemipenes pocket, you can also incorrectly determine the sex of the animal as a female. I have also read of instances where too small of a probe was used on females with too much force which basically tore an opening into their cloacal pocket which allowed the probe to go deeper thereby giving the false belief that the animal was a male.
Be careful of picking out the right size probe and always lubricate it with KY Jelly or something equivalent to ensure for maximum probing efficiency and safety of the animal. Also, try probing in different areas like off-center instead of directly against the side of the cloaca, because again, the physical attributes of that particular animal may not fall within the expected normality.
And to answer your last question, yes. Babies can be a specific sex while visually giving the physical attribute of being of the opposite sex.
Case in point, I was sold a "male" albino hog 2 years ago that as a baby visually looked like a male based solely on tail length. After a year and a half, that tail length started looking less and less like a typical males length tail as the animal was going through a growth spurt and the tail was quickly becoming smaller in relation to the body. Only until that point did I choose to probe the snake and determined that "he" was actually a she.
-----
Troy Rexroth
Rextiles
