Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My lavender Cal King appears to be egg bound.
Last year she produced 5 eggs no problem.

This year:

3/20 - copulation observed
5/2 - prelay shed
5/5 - single obvious dud
5/8 - six good looking eggs
5/9 - one good looking egg

She still clearly has two eggs in her. The bump from the egg closest to the tail is at a very recognizable part of her banding and hasn't moved since 5/9.

I've tried palpating it down and had no luck. Yesterday I soaked her in lukewarm water and still it has not moved.

At what point should I take her to vet to have the last two eggs aspirated? It's still within 2 weeks of prelay - but the main laying sequence was 5 days ago.
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I decided my old sig was too big.

In my opinion, it is now time to bring her to a vet.

Good Luck!

~ Mike Russo

That's my opinion as well, from the timeline given, and the attempted palpation not helping, I would do this ASAP!

Good luck with the girl!

~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

Coming from the guy who tells everyone to go to the vet... I would hold off.

First of all how does she look? Has she eaten? Is she active? Still in the nest box?

When it comes to egg binding its a tough call. If you stress her with car trips etc she will stop trying to lay, leaving you with medical treatment as your only option. Being that she has continued to pass eggs over several days I wold wait a little longer. The one thing you could try is ask your vet if he would give you a shot of oxytosin without seeing her. You will need to know how much she weighs. I have seen mixed results with oxytosin but it can't hurt.

Obviously take her if she looks like she is in bad shape.

It's done - the vet sucked the contents out.
He actually offered to try and save the second egg by only sucking the contents of the first out, but I decided it was better not to try, since there was no guarantee that the second egg would come out on its own anyway.
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I decided my old sig was too big.

The egg wouldn't have been good anyway. You did the right thing.

That was the smartest move on his part. One question though,...why would the second egg automatically have to be bad?

~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

To be perfectly honest... i don't know exactly why. I know eggs have a limited window when they can be laid and viable. I have never heard of a viable egg that was passed more than 72 hours after the rest of the clutch.

Anyone have another experience?

Yeah, I've done some more researching, and asked a few friends that have had similar problems in the past with this too, and indeed it seems sort of strange that a female can harbor the eggs all that time before laying, and then when she finally does lay, the eggs that DON'T get expelled along with the rest of the clutch do tend to be unviable usually within a 24-48 hour period. And stranger yet that the yolk begins to thicken so much within that short period as well.

From what I can gather, the unviable egg(s) harden and shrink rather quickly like this more than likely so the female can soon pass them,....although they are no longer viable at this point, the fact that all this happens so suddenly is probably a natural "safeguard" for the female, as otherwise they could likely remain in the female and putrify in fairly short order, killing the snake in the process.

This now makes perfect sense to me, as this would hopefully allow females the ability to at least rid themselves of the bad egg(s), thus sparing their lives to go on and produce again in the future.

Nature really does seem to be an amazingly well-oiled machine for the most part.........when I stop and think about this process, it is very interesting to say the least!.

best regards, ~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

I think that there are a lot of things that we don't really understand about reptile eggs. Like why are eggs that are surgically removed always unviable? I always thought that the retained egg infertility had to do with respiration and the eggs 02 needs. But since i can't remember where I heard that it might be total BS.

Yes, I'm thinking that surgically removed eggs might be unviable for the very reason I mentioned earlier, as eggs wouldn't normally be worried about until it was well past time for the given female to lay naturally. The eggs need of oxygen within a very narrow "window", probably does have a lot to do with this as you mentioned.

In any case, most of the time, truth DOES seem to be stranger than fiction, and "mother nature" seems to be quite the engineer!.

best regards, ~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"