Reptile & Amphibian Forums

How do I determain if I have a Female or a Male? Any other info on breeding would be great.

That I know of, probing is the only good way, but it takes someone who is experienced with sexing them as they can be tricky. Your vet may be able to evert the hemipenes with a fluid injection.

I'd be interested to see if people have had luck with manual eversion on newborns.

The only guaranteed method of sexing BTs is to wait until sexual maturity. This is a pain I know, but is 100%. Males will drop sperm plugs at random. These cannot be detected on many substrates. The skink needs to be kept on turf or carpet in order to see the plugs. Other substrates will absorb them. Other methods of sexing are not fool proof. I have even known documented cases when expert breeders have misidentified sexes of young BTs. There are many other methods which can lead to a good educated guess: eye color, width below vent, head size, etc... But again, this is only an educated guess for those who have seen many, many BTs. Hope this has been helpful.

Probing is very potentially damaging to BTS and usually ineffective in determining sex.
Eversion of the hemipenes MAY work but, if not done by an experienced individual, can lead to irreversible damage. Bottom line, it is very risky if you don't know what you're doing.
Seminal plugs are the only truly safe way to determine sex in BTS.
-----
Edward
Carpe diem

Good point.

I was unclear about one point that I should stress right now. Probing should not be done by anyone who is inexpereinced or untrained on any reptile, especially not a BTS. I was by no means encouraging the novice or even somewhat seasoned herp keeper to attempt this on their own. It has, however, been done by experts and does work, but it is potentially very dangerous.

Luis

Does anyone have a photo of these sperm plugs that they could please post?

Thank you,

Brian

n/p
-----
Edward
Carpe diem

there is a pic of a seminal plug and many other great info and pics on www.bluetongueskinks.net that site has an amazing amount of info on there!