I had three premies that had a LOT of yolk outside of the body when born,and in less than 5 hours had absorbed almost all of it into the body. Subsequently, the yolk that was taken in was not used by the body before it became hardened.
My concern began when those three didn't shed with the group, and escalated when I saw swelling in the abdomen. The yolk itself didnt cause swelling, only a hard lump that could be felt. What I assumed to be an infection caused swelling before and after that lump. That was treated with antibiotics used for marine fish. I figured that would be easiest, as it can be added to water for them to drink, or to soak in. When the swelling went down, and the lump remained, I posted here on Kingsnake asking for help, and got numerous emails with suggestions. Many had experienced the same thing, and the most common responses was "Mine died". I didn't want to go down like that without a fight.
I had three animals to work with... so I had three test animals that would die if I didn't do anything, so dieing from anything other than nothing wasn't going to feel so bad.
One was my control animal. It was given antibiotics only to control the swelling.It died on sunday trying to pass the mass.
By the end I had both of the other 2 on tubed mineral oil, and saline injections into the masses.
Early on, one of those was given just mineral oil, and then it was tubed some saline. Saline seemed to work, but worked better when injected into the mass. When the one who was injected with saline and tubed the mineral oil seemed to be doing awesome, I switched the other(the one pictured in the other post) to that treatment strategy.
There are a lot of blanks to fill in regarding quanties, frequency, and what exactly I used, and when I get time I will do a write up on that. For now, I am just still hopefull that the one that passed the big chunk makes it.
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Davey Giltner

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