Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Okay here is the time line I am dealing with on the Tangerine honduran we spoke of several post below:

4-20 Prelay shed

4-24 Layed one slug

4-26 layed two large good eggs and one slug ( dont know in what order these were layed. Just found them all in the box)

4-28 Still no more eggs layed. Clear that there is still one or two left in her. It is a very large egg if its only one.

4-30 Morning time : Egg has moved down closer to vent but it is huge. Took to vet. Xray shows one VERY large egg towards vent and two more eggs 3 inches or so up the body. I had not even noticed those. Vet Administered Oxytocin and Calcium. I also Took out in yard and let exercise for a while. Put back in lay area. I am concerned about the size of this egg.

4-31 Huge egg still right at vent ( within 1/2 inch of the vent opening)

It has been just 11 days since her prelay shed but its clear things are NOT going as they should. How long should I wait to choose to have this large egg aspirated? I am unsure how long I have before the contents inside it start to harden.

Clearly many of you have dealt with this before. Its my first female to become eggbound. Your advice is appreciated.

Iam not very knowledgable on the subject, but it seems like an awful long time. You meant May right? If it were me, to be on the safe side to protect your mom, I would have the vet express the one close to the vent. You have 2 good eggs and the mom is alive. That sounds pretty good to me. Good luck. Derek

Yes I meant those timelines in May .I am on day eleven after her prelay shed. I could care less about saving the eggs..I just want to make the best choices for her. and I want to make choices that are as less evasive for her as possible.

I'm assuming that you meant May not April. Just my opinion but based on my experience you have already waited too long. Females usually lay all their eggs within a 24 hour period. I say usually. I have never had one take more than 48 hours unless they were egg bound. You waited too long between the last eggs out and taking her to a vet assuming that you did nothing in the interim. A warm water bath can work wonders, sometimes. Once the vet administered the medication you should have seen a reaction. She should have at least gone through an attempt to lay the last 3 eggs. If an x-ray shows a large egg stuck at or near her vent and it's been there for days, then you need to do something. At this point I would consider aspirating the egg with a syringe.
Keep us posted but at this point I think you may lose her.

Thanks for your note.Here is the plan. The vet can not do anything till friday, but on friday AM I will take her in. She will be put under , and they will aspirate the eggs and try to manipulate them down> if they can manipulate them out at that point they have been given permission to do full surgery and remove them.

I do not want to lose her. and did not feel I was waiting to long taking her to the vet on the 4th day. I felt I was giving her time to do her thing naturally since i was seeing egg movement. I would have taken her in sooner if i felt i was causing her risks. I hope this turns out better than your predictions but totally appreciate your opennes and opinions.

regards
Dawn

sounds like a good plan. I had one hondo 2 years ago that had 1 egg remaining fairly close to the vent. I aspirated it, but she never would pass it. After about 10 days it started moving back UP the oviduct (ie. away from the vent) until it finally stopped around mid-body. Some time later (many weeks) she eventually passed the shell. The next year she bred just fine and produced this little gem.

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Paul Weaver
Carolina Herps

THanks paul. May I ask how many days you waited before you chose to aspirate it? I never suspected I was waiting too long to take acute action but other posters have led me to beleive I may have. Sad how we must learn through experience sometimes, but i still hope that we can help this girl.

It was about a week or so after the rest of the eggs were overdue. I think you still have time so don't worry about it. It takes a while for the yolk to harden up.
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Paul Weaver
Carolina Herps

I would aspirate it and then give a day or two before going for surgery. I have only aspirated one egg and it worked. She passed it that night. Combining another shot of oxytosin with the aspiration couldn't hurt either IMO.

I wish I had been as lucky as the others that have responded to your post. For the first few years that I bred colubrids I had no problems. I only read about egg bound females. Then I had a very nice amel sonoran gopher get bound. Huge eggs, first year breeder, past due, and I could not even massage them down close to her vent. No vet in the area so I tried recommendations from the forum, nothing worked and I lost her. Then a couple of years after that I lost an older, proven breeder, tamaulipan rat. She got the first one out but none of the other 3 would move down close to her vent. So I am quick to take action and not wait. No vet in my area that will work with snakes, just dogs and cats. I quickly try the higher temps, higher humidity, warm water soaking, and massaging the eggs close to the vent and out if possible. I would rather lose a couple of eggs or a complete clutch then an adult female.
Best of luck

I was torn between allowing the vet to do surgery that day if she cant manipulate the eggs down after aspiration or whether to just have her aspirate then let the snake try and pass it on it's own over the weekend. The vet is great..she just wants to get the eggs out but plans on doing open surgery that day if she cant manipulate them out after aspiration. Its hard to know what will be the right choice. I hate to have the snake cut into if not necessary, but I dont want to lose her to eggs being stuck in her either...

I had three snakes require surgery for being eggbound last year (1 female black milk in her first year breeding and two Hondurans in their second year).

The black milk had her last large egg get stuck just above the vent. One Honduran had one egg that never seemed to move down the oviduct evn though she laid 7 perfect eggs. That egg stayed up there for about 6 weeks before she went off feed and required surgery. I was hoping she would just reabsorb it. The other Honduran had two eggs stay high in the oviduct after 5 others passed fine. In all three cases, the vet thought the oviduct looked perfectly healthy.

All three have recovered fine and we'll see this year if they breed successfully. It was a very expensive experience (about $1,900 for all three snakes) and for the life of me I can't figure out what kind of husbandry issue might have caused it. After talking to other breeders I can only conclude it was bad luck.

Rob

Rob, thanks for sharing your story. After all is said and done, I will have paid the vet about 525.00 for this issue, and honestly that is alot cheaper than I thought it would be so it doesnt bother me too bad, except for the fact that I have to be dealing with it at all. I hate that my snake is going through this, and I do want to get her through this with her body in good shape too.

>>After talking to other breeders I can only conclude it was bad luck.
>>

Hi Rob
I have to respectfully disagree. I don't have the answers, but I do know that egg binding is way too common for it to be bad luck IMO.
I think we have 2 things going on. #1 is that in captivity weaker animals are not selected against as they are in nature. #2 is husbandry.

I saw in my own collection that as cages and temp choices became smaller, egg binding reared its ugly head. But the sample is so small that it is hard to make any definite claims. My feeling nonetheless is that we do not necessarily give the females adequate conditions for successful egg laying, though most females do it well anyway. Some may be more picky however and retain the eggs.

Mark:

I actually agree with part of your post. I think females in racks or cages may not get the adequate amount of exercise to have the same type of musculature or muscle tone they would have in the wild. A more sendentary lifestyle may simply make them not as reliable egg layers as they should be. I guess the reason I believe this has merit is that the larger specimens tend to be the ones that get eggbound.

I'm not sure I agree with your theory that captive breeding results in retaining weaker animals who are more prone to egg binding.

I guess the real question to ask is this: Can we prevent egg binding? I don't think so. You can provide large caging, proper temperatures, lots of water, etc. and I still think it will happen on occassion. I for one plan to switch my adult hondurans from 28-quart boxes to CB-70 boxes intended for adult ball pythons. My black milks are already in 3 foot vision cages.

Rob

We have her at the vet today to have procedures done to remove these eggs. She has remained active, alert and healthy appearing throughout the week but no egg movement.