Is there an easy way to tell age?

[Little B-Py]

Just as the title says, I was curious as to how old Oakley and Hissy could be and was wondering if there were any ways to tell.

[azpythons]

cut them in half and count the rings

[zombie&lemons]

Now thats funny

[Oxylepy]

There is actually a very easy way to tell their age.

When you get a snake, ask the person you get it from exactly how old the snake is and try and find out if they know when it was born.

[Little B-Py]

cut them in half and count the rings

That was pretty good, I do admit. I was actually gonna say it's not like we can count the rings on them or anything. lol

There is actually a very easy way to tell their age.

When you get a snake, ask the person you get it from exactly how old the snake is and try and find out if they know when it was born.

The issue there would be that we get it from a store who gets it from their supplier so I'm pretty sure they don't have that info at hand.



Any way a vet can tell?

[azpythons]

I would say that you can probably tell by size....but ive seen 5 month old ball pythons that are huge any my little one and a half year old pastel is tiiiinnnyy i think who i bought it from fed it pinkys its entire first year of life, hes growing though!

I assume a vet could tell you the approximate size.....

[Texas Dan]

Birth certificate?

[kc261]

On rattlesnakes, you can supposedly count the rattles, although I think even that is dependent more on size than on age. So a younger snake that grew faster because it found more to eat may have more rattles than an older but smaller one.

As has been pointed out, there really is no way to know with a BP. Too much depends on individual tendencies, how much & how often it was fed, illnesses that may have affected its growth, etc.

If you take the snake to a vet that tells you how old it is, it is more likely that the vet either doesn't know enough to know he can't make a reliable estimate, or he is just giving his best estimate in order to make the customer happy, even though he knows there is no way to be sure.

[Oxylepy]

Rattles usually are due to shedding. So the more rattles the more sheds. Which would make it more of a size than an age thing.

[azpythons]

wouldnt that be cool if there was a scale for every day they were alive...or like i blushing spot for every year or sum kind of physiacal attribute that would tell you age