Sexing and injuries?

OK, since no one actually answered the OPs question, I'll share the limited knowledge I have on it. The main risk as I have understood it with popping is snapping their spine, quick can cause paralysis and other issues, with probing the risk is with either using too large or small a probe, causing a puncture or rip internally. Not sure what the exact complications are other than the obvious injury, and all this is for on stuff I've read and not personal experience. Hopefully this is a little helpful.

Either popping or probing, if done wrong, will cause visible injury. For popping, as Darkbird said, it will snap the bone in the tail, usually causing it to heal crooked. For probing, it will rip the inside of the snake and cause obvious bleeding from the vent, and they can get an infection which can kill them. I had my sister come over and check monty with the popping method, which is much easier and in my opinion, safer, but less reliable. In my opinion, if you want a snake sexed, take it to the vet and have them do it. Mine would have cost $70 for a full check up and probing. Honestly. If you never plan to breed, or house ball pythons together, it's not a big deal to not have them sexed.

It can cause reproductive issues.

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Originally Posted by ballpythonsrock2

Hi I'm Steve and kind of new here. After much reading here and other sites about BP's have thought of a question in this subject. I have one BP regular I got from Petco. I kind of feel it is a girl but I haven't popped or probed it and I don't really need to try. I am not going to have more than one, nor plan to breed it. I just want him/her as a pet. I love having him/her, it's almost an obsession. ( ask my wife she'll tell ya ) she isn't much on snakes but supports my interest.
I know that males are about 3 and half feet and females grow to about 5 or 5 and half feet. So how long do I need to wait till it has reached maturity and I will know by it's size whether it is a male or female? Since it really isn't important for me to know except for the name. And like Brian on snake bytes say's if your not going to breed, does it really matter if you call your snake a mismatched name. How long in months or years is it before you will know size matters?;)

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Hey Steve, first off welcome to the forum! Males reach maturity at 10-18 months and females reach it at 20-36 months. Hope this helped