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How can i determine sexual maturity in cornsnakes?
What are the indicators that make a cornsnake sexually mature?
Is there a technique of some sort ? besides ecography

Thanx

Sexual maturity in most reptiles (dare I say all?) is size determined. Males generally mature faster, and this is the case for corn snakes as well. I do not have enough first hand experience breeding these guys to give you the very soonest that they can be bred, but I can tell you that when the male is 3 feet or so, and the female is 3-4 feet with good weight on her, breeding probably will be successfull. From an age point of view, 2 years is about when I would start. I'm sure they could breed earlier, but I prefer to wait until then.

Any more experienced corn breeder's have anything else to add?

Thanx a very much
But my actual question is how do I prove the actual sexual maturity on the animal (by a method)not by trial breeding.
Something like an ecography to determine follicle activity or maybe a hormone test. I want to know something that people do in herping to prove this

Thanx

PS:its to help me out in my thesis)

That clarifies things a bit

There actually is no test that is regularly done to prove an animal is sexually mature. If further workup was desired by a really curious person, where cost wasn't a factor, the first thing would be to look for a referal to a very experienced herp vet. Moreso than the one you'd regularly use; Jacobson, Stahl ect.

1)For a female, ultrasounding for follicles would give you a good idea if the animal is sexually mature. Since this isn't done very often, and normal varience in a particular species hasn't been well documented, this will give you a "best guess". Questions that would need to be answered for a definative answer would be a)is follicular developement only visible seasonally?
b)if so, does

sorry about that, I had to jump to fix a dog's i/v line...

As I was saying, the general problem with diagnostics in reptiles, and specifically to find out if an animal is sexually mature, is that baseline data is sorely lacking. For example, a 6month old corn snake may be 'sounded and found to have 10 enlarged follicles in the ovary. Is this normal? A sign of being sexually mature?
Emperically, if a corn snake is born in the late spring, the coming breeding season will trigger follicular action if the snake is of size. (that'd be around 9 months) I would guess that a second clutch (late summer) would not be affected by the winter season/coming spring and not have any variance in gonad activity.

Another possible test for both males and females is hormone levels. Again, the lack of baseline data is apparent. Testosterone and estrogen are not often measured in reptiles (probably most often in iguana spay/neuter/breeding studies). An interesting study would be to monitor the levels of these hormones in corn snakes as they grow and mature, with different variables taken out in a control group (some with a breeding season, some without).

Have fun with your thesis, and I hope I havn't messed you up to much with this long winded reply!
Ian

Thanks for the reply, it´s pretty much part of what i need to find out.
Thanks a lot.