Probing issue

[Alicia]

He told me it was female. But I am just curious as to what size is a proper size for a probe?


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Couples ways to pick probe size. One is going by the over all size of the snake. I've got my probe kit right here and looking at it with a ruler, I use the 1mm ball for babies after several meals or ~100 grams, the ~ 1.2mm for juvies/subadults, and if I were to probe an adult, I'd probably go with the 2mm one.

Unfortunately I'm not looking at this relative to a snake right now, but this corresponds to ~1/5-ish of the anal scale, or about half of one of the BP's subcaudal scales. Not sure I'm visualizing that right. I'll see if I can't grab a snake tomorrow and really compare for a better description.

The big thing is to be very, very gentle. If it does not slip in easily, it's too large. If it seems like it's going in super easy anywhere to the mid line of the cloaca, it's probably too small. Never ever push or attempt to force it. Once in, a male will feel "springy" and have a soft stop, a female feels more like an immediate hard stop. Males can be almost surprising when you draw the probe out. It does not feel like it's going in, if that makes sense, until you hit resistance. Any resistance, stop immediately. If someone has messed up a snake in the past, it's usually the left side that will probe too deep -- the right hand side of the heavy-handed prober. Hence, why people probe both sides.


edit to add - from the photo, I'm guessing that's a 2mm ball on that probe, which is probably what I'd use, as well.