Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was hoping someone could help me out. When do male Sulcatas develop the concavity to their plastron? I have a 15 inch sulcata with a flat plastron. If it were a male should it be showing signs on concavity? Thanks for any help

ok well telling male from female can be very difficult i have found since the sulcatas we are now getting are captive breed generation after generation i believe they start to loose their distinctive feature which make them differ from one another. however if you would really like to find out whether your is male or female i would not use the plastrom as a way of telling. The distinct feature that the males and females will never loose is the size of their tales. If your sulcata tale is long reaching to the hind legs i would say for sure it is a male and the females have a very small tall almost just a nub and in some cases can not even fold it over. Some people say that it is possible to tell by the formation underneath the shell by their tells that females will have a more circular shape for dropping eggs and males will keep the shape from when they where young however i don't believe this is a good way to gage it either because our female never developed that circulor part of the shell and i know for a fact she is a female because she has laid eggs for us. so go with the tale method and see what you thing.

thanks jason
www.midwestreptileexpo.com

I would think that by the time they're 15 inches & that plastron is still flat most likely you have a female.
You can have them DNA sexed like parrots now. My vet does DNA sexing on them & doesn't charge much money for it either.
Less than 30 dollars I think.
-----
PHRatz