Sexing questions

[icygirl]

Hi all,

I just moved out to western MA and took my couple-month-old BP to the local vet for a visit, not because I knew anything about the vet, but because they refused to do a fecal test for me unless I had an initial vet visit, and that's what I really wanted from them. This vet apparently treats exotics (I found her from the herp vet connection site) but seemed like she didn't have much experience. I asked if she would be able to sex my snake and I got a very perplexed response, followed by some scrambling for info in back and coming up empty. I guess they don't have small enough probes there anyways, but I wouldn't want an inexperienced exotics vet probing my snake :\

Anyhow, my question is this. We were discussing non-invasive methods and the vet mentioned something about being able to count the "double scales" on the snake's belly to determine if it was male or female, which I think are the ones below the vent, and also that in females the tail tends to narrow sharply after the vent where in the male it is a more gradual taper. However she was not sure on either of these and now I am just curious if anyone knows if there is truth to these statements and if they apply to BP's? (She also talked about doing x-rays to detect the spurs, but I don't think that applies to BP's.)

And for anyone who was wondering, I am not getting the fecal done there but they are sending it to a lab where they are more familiar with examining snake fecal's. I wish I could have just done that myself and canceled out the expensive middleman