In my experience, its very rare to lose a female monitor to being egg bound. They are not like snakes. They can and do pass held eggs for weeks.
As an example. I have had one female die from being eggbound. That is over many thousands of clutches.
I have had many females hold eggs. But the pass them at a later date. This should start to form a mental picture in your head.
My belief is, these female monitors that fail, have ongoing infections(poor immune systems) These infections render the reproductive system inoperable.
Exsisting infections coupled with poor nesting, often leads to exsisting problems being exposed and their death.
In the last few years, I have stopped hatching many monitors. I would simply not give them nesting. But they would still cycle and lay eggs, no problems. So it "must" not be nesting alone.
For instance, my old bag female just laid her 66th clutch. She has not had nesting or a male in two/three years. That has not made a difference, she keeps eating and laying, eating and laying. Shes not done yet. hahahahahahahahaha
I do understand, people often do not comprehend what I say, how could they, they do not have the EXPERIENCE to understand, its not about how smart they are, they simply have not traveled my road. I am sure after a few hundred clutches they would understand, muchless a few thousand.
With that in mind, I often say, monitors will breed at the minimum conditions, not just maximum conditions. These events clearly show they will attempt to reproduce in even suboptimum conditions.
I also say, females will give everything to reproduce, even if it means their death. This is also expressed here. The pic of that female shows a dehydrated female giving her lifes energy to continue her genetic line.
Lets take one possible condition, dehydration. As with anything, there are millions of levels of dehydration. Also, as with all animals, by the time YOU a keeper can see it, dehydration is advanced. In order to cause outward visiual signs, it has to be very advanced.
Which means, dehydration mostly exsists unseen. Then pops its ugly head during stressful times as in egg laying.
One of the reasons I use successful reproduction as a model is, It is an event that will expose many unseen problems. If an individual is weak, sick, dehydrated, behaviorally unbalanced, etc, it will be exposed.
Heres a stupid analogy to consider, its like comparing a bed ridden patient to a highly conditioned athlete. They are both humans but are in totally different health conditions, they are both alive, but in a much different way. It also takes an entirely different regime to support a bed ridden patient that what supports an athlete. Now consider a healthy monitor is an athlete. A simple caged monitor that lays around, is bed ridden. I would not try to breed a bed ridden individual.
What it means when this happens to you is, your getting close, but still in need of better support. Cheers
