Reptile & Amphibian Forums

The female eastern king that I got the parthenogenic baby from last year had another clutch this week. Last year she didn't lay till mid-May. What I thought was a pre-ovulation shed and ovulation the other week was not.

She laid 3 odd shaped orange slugs and 1 halfway decent looking egg and then after that nothing. That 1 egg doesn't look like it's gonna make it. It started filling out then stopped.

Anyways, the remaining eggs inside the snake appeared blocked up. After soaking and massaging for a few days it was apparent that even though the eggs had dropped down like they should have, they were not going to come out. I thought maybe the oviduct was collapsed or possibly twisted some preventing the eggs from passing. Made an appointment with the vet who saw the snake this afternoon. He knew that this snake had had surgery 2 years ago by another vet for a prolapsed oviduct caused by malformed slugs so he was prepared for possible surgery. Good news is we managed to avoid that. He got a syringe of KY and a ball tipped syringe and managed to work it up inside and squirt the lube in then massaged the area a bit to help loosen things. It worked well enough that he could get the eggs to appear just enough to grab on with hemostats and pull them out one by one. There were 6 eggs removed total. 5 from one oviduct and 1 from the other. The weird thing is, there was nothing off with these 6 eggs that should have prevented them from passing. There was no malformed or oddly shaped eggs removed from her today. They were more or less normal nice sized eggs. There was however an infection inside the oviduct.. once we got the eggs out the smell just hit you. There was some cheesy like material that was probably creating the blockage he thinks. He filled a syringe with some powdered antibiotics and mixed it with water and irrigated the oviduct to help clear up the infection.

5 of the 6 eggs look like they might survive so I am gonna incubate and keep my fingers crossed on another possible parthenogenic baby. The 6th is partially deflated and discolored as it was the one closest to the opening and apparently was sitting in the worst of the infection.

I washed the eggs as best I could with water and got the worst of the smell and slime and gunk off. I'm wondering if it would be safe to dip a q-tip in say chlorhexidine and clean the eggs further hoping that the antibacterial properties will help give the eggs a fighting chance against whatever bacteria might still be on them? Would this be safe to use on the egg shells?
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PHWyvern

Not sure I’d try it.

The air and moisture exchange might swap out Chlorhexidine. Not sure what results it would produce.

How do your eggs look now that a couple of days have passed? Showing any signs of mold or deflating?

I have used a very light dusting of fungal foot powder in the passed. Tell you the truth it didn’t stop anything that nature already had in store for those eggs anyway. My thought is to let nature take its course see what happens.

Good luck with your eggs.

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>>How do your eggs look now that a couple of days have passed? Showing any signs of mold or deflating?

The one that was partially deflated is still that way hasn't showed any signs of filling out. The others are still plumped out nice. They are all a bit discolored from the infection. I have had a few infertile eggs from other animals go practically full term before finally collapsing on me and I have had eggs that looked bad actually hatch, so I never like to throw out iffy eggs. This is just the first time I've had to deal with eggs that had been surrounded by an infection within the mother. As a precaution, I do have each egg in a separate container (condiment cups) so if one does go bad or mold it won't spread to the others.
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PHWyvern

Good idea separating them.

Hate to lose any egg especially the troublesome.

Hope they run full term for you. I hate the mother hen syndrome takes to much hair off my head.

Good Luck..

Eggs are hydrophilic, so I would avoid using the direct application of Chlorhexidine to such and for the same reason, I would also avoid the direct contact of water, as there is the possibility the eggs will absorb too much water, which will drown the developing embryo.
I too have incurred good results using a powder spray anti-fungal, which I apply to the end of a soft brush and gently dust each egg with, but I normally wait until I observe the initial stages of fungal growth before doing so. For problematic eggs, I like to use sphagnum moss as the primary incubation substrate, as the acidity contained bu such will often work well in hindering the growth of bacteria, fungus and mold…

Best of luck to you,

Jeff
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Jeff Snodgres
University of Arkansas
snodgresjeffreys@uams.edu
501.603.1947