Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My Black Milk is laying her first clutch and I'm worried there may be a problem. She laid 3 eggs right away, one egg a day later, and now there are three eggs left in her with no progress for the past 3 days. The eggs are positioned right by her vent with the first one about an inch away.

I'm an experienced breeder with Ball Pythons, but this is my first Milk Snake clutch. I read that they can take up to a month to pass all of their eggs, but that seems a bit unusual.

Can any experienced Milk Snake breeders give me some info. on what is a normal amount of time to wait for a clutch to be delivered? At what point should I try to assist her in massaging the egg out or aspirating the egg?

If she started to lay and doesn't show any progress by 24 hours...I would do whatever you feel comfortable doing to help her out.

Aspirating the egg, in my opinion, can be a good idea if followed up with palpating the egg out.

However, I was told that if the egg contents leak into the snake, if the egg doesn't come out, can cause an infection. This make sense to me...so it's a risk.

I recently lost a snake due to egg binding and aspirating didn't help due to the oviduct being twisted. I took her to a vet and lost the snake primarily due to the snake being put under twice within a 3-4 hour period.

So, 400 dollars later, I had a dead snake due to lack of the vet's knowledge of reptiles (even though I gave explicit instructions on the procedure).

If you do take it to a vet, make sure they know what they are doing! Also, I would be there to witness the procedure...even if you have to take off from work.

Good luck.

-Rusty

Also, aspiration of the egg is only good for a few days after the beginning of laying. The bad eggs will turn solid soon...after that you only have surgery as an option.

Time is critical...

-R