Corn Snake Hatchling Gender Ratio Poll

[wendhend]

This poll is for those of you who breed your corns. Over the years that I have breeding my corns, I have noticed that I always seem to produce significantly more male hatchlings than females. This year I decided to track it officially. I produced close to 100 babies and got 63% males and 37% females. I don't think there is anything you can do incubation-wise to influence gender with corn snakes. Besides the fact that I always hatch so many more males, it is also a bit frustrating that so many customers want to buy females, despite them being priced higher, and I typically have at least three times as many males for sale as females. I'm just curious if anyone else has noticed any trends in their hatchling gender ratios?

 

[Blue Apple Herps]

I voted that mine are pretty equal. I've had clutches that will be uncannily heavy of one sex. This year, across the board, I did get more males than females, probably 70% males and 30% females. But if I were to add it up over the years, its all pretty much more or less equal.

 

[JoannaD]

I think that I have produced more males but I have never really checked closely. I do know that I always seem to produce only males of the morphs that I am going for!

I also notice that the females seem to be more fragile - more likely to be non feeders or kinked. Again this is my feeling but I have never checked the numbers. It might seem that way because I am more interested in producing females so notice more of their problems. :shrugs:

 

[nlt71]

I noticed that some of my clutches seemed male heavy. I will have to count next year. I'm left with mostly males right now.

 

[dionythicus]

I just know that the ones I hope are one gender usually turn out to be the opposite. It never fails that the ones I really want to be female are males and vice versa.

I wonder if there are more males born because they are more at risk travelling to find females when its breeeding season in the wild and they are more likely to get picked off by predators?

 

[Nanci]

My clutches this year were 12.3 and 4.1...

 

[dickdeuel]

Over the years I think it has evened out. Every year is different. I have had times that clutches were all males or all females. This seems to be true in all my snakes, not just corn snakes.

When I sell female snakes in a high male year I require a male to be purchased with it, usually at a reduced price.

 

[ghosthousecorns]

While I voted equal, I have noticed many male heavy or female heavy clutches - few where the ratio is evenly split - especially amongst morphs. This year when shooting for cinders - Two clutches produced only male cinders, one clutch only produced female cinders, one where I got both males and females. One of the clutches that produced all male cinders also produced mostly female normals. I also have noticed the same thing in past clutches (all the same morph are the same gender) but I guess I can attribute that more to Murphy than anything else.

 

[Hallie]

Something I noticed 2 years ago when I pulled my babies out of the incubator as soon as they came out of the egg (so I knew pretty much exactly which egg they came out of and in what order they hatched)...I gave them IDs in the order they hatched and when it came time to sex them, all the snakes of one sex hatched before those of the opposite. I can't recall for sure right now, but I believe all the females hatched first. The ratio was 4.6, I believe. Could be Murphy, but could there potentially be an incubation factor there? All the first hatchers were from the eggs closest to the heat source in the incubator and also happened to be all female. Has anyone else noticed a similar pattern? This year and last I didn't pull them out of the incubator in the same way and I also didn't ID them right away, so I didn't get a chance to potentially repeat my findings. I may do that next year...

 

[Kuzco]

this year was just about 50:50 out of 70+ eggs