>>The eggs, in my opinion, are bad and were never fertile from the beginning. That is also the main cause for egg binding that I've observed. In my experience, I've never had egg binding issues with good eggs.





This is a really interesting observation, RG. Particularly in light of a lengthy conversation I had with a friend of mine who has some expertise in reproductive physiology. I called her the other night after this incident, and she mentioned that one of the biggest themes in that branch of science is this idea of "maternal recognition of pregnancy." This doesn't refer to any conscious recognition on mom's part, of course, but rather to her body's recognition that eggs are developing so that the necessary hormones are occurring in the bloodstream at the proper time and at the proper levels. My friend, a snake breeder herself, conceded that there is sadly little research on this in reptiles, but mentioned that in other animals, this maternal recognition of pregnancy is mediated by a hormonal "conversation" between the embryos and the gravid female. Although this has yet to be researched and supported, she suspicions that in snakes with infertile eggs, it becomes much easier for this conversation to become "one-sided" and for things to go wrong. Though untested, this seems reasonable to me, and might definitely explain why eggs from dystocic females are frequently nonviable or infertile to begin with.
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