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What happened with your egg laying girl. Did she finish laying without any more problems?

Yes, thanks for asking! After the prolapse event, she laid approximately one egg per day from 7/19 to 7/26 (I think those are the right dates... I'm not at home to see my records). Every day (sometimes I would skip a day) I would remove her from her nest box and move her head to the water bowl. She always drank quite a bit. Per Don Soderberg's advice regarding a different eggbound female I had this year, I let her crawl through my hands for just a couple minutes to give her some exercise and keep the muscles moving. Finally, I would manually palpate the egg closest to the vent (which was usually a good four inches or so from the vent) and get it to move a centimeter or two. Within 24 hours, that egg was out and we'd repeat the above steps. There were never any more problems with the oviduct prolapsing, but it was a very tiring experience for both me and the snake! At least she passed them all and appears to be fine. She ate a small hopper yesterday, which I took as a wonderful sign.

I've learned quite a bit this year (anyone who thinks there's nothing left to learn after breeding snakes for 10+ years is mistaken!) I ended up with two eggbound snakes this year, which is a real drag since I haven't had that problem in a few years. Anyway, the first female still had 15 eggs in her at the time they all got stuck. I was determined to get them out NOW and took all kinds of drastic measures to get them moving over a 9-day period. I tried manual palpation, squirting KY into her oviduct, aspiration, warm water swims... (not all at once of course, but over several days) Nine days after she became eggbound, she died. Whether her death was a result of me stressing and exhausting her every day, I do not know. I did a necropsy, and while I really didn't know what I should be looking for, I did find a green, jiggly mass under her oviduct near her vent that appeared out of place.

So with this second female, I took a more passive approach (Don's advice with the first female, which I followed a little too late), and only disturbed her for only 2-3 minutes, once per day or less. So, the moral to the story is, when you ask someone with much more experience than you for advice, follow it!

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Ronda Van Winkle
Northwest Herpetoculture

Thanks Ronda...

Glad she was able to lay them all. Sorry to hear about your other girl. I lost one this spring to an infection from unabsorbed follicles. I did not even know she was sick.

Take care,
krawls