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My male anery breeder has an extruded hemipenis that has been out for 2 days. He has been caged with a female for breeding for a month and was doing fine until yesterday. I am afraid it will be damaged being exposed for that long. Should I soak him or what? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
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YES, by all means, keep it from drying and getting damaged.....and get him to a reptile vet right now!!! If the tissue is still good, he can be sedated and it can be flushed, cleaned and reinserted....where, with a couple of stitches and a little time, it may heal and stay in. It may already be too late, but you won't know until you try.....

While on the way out the door to the vet - coat the exposed hemipene with honey (if it's readily available). This will keep the tissue moist and honey has natural properties that help to reduce swelling. If you don't have honey, at least coat it with KY Jelly or something similar.

The main point though is to get him to the vet right away.

If it is indeed too late, the vet will most likely suggest that the hemipene be removed. He is obviously a breeder for you. Don't worry, I have seen and heard of several male boas that have been able to continue breeding with only the one remaining hemipene.

Good Luck,

Mike Greathouse...

What (if anything) do you think is the cause of this problem?

I've seen all kinds of weird stuff, females dragging the males around. Males everting the hemipenes to dump shavings or other trash off the whole deal (ouch!) but I have not (knock on wood) had the everted, won't go in problem here.

what could be the cause?
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Gus
A. Rentfro
RioBravoReptiles.com
www.riobravoreptiles.com

"Quality is not an accident. Perfectly healthy animals are a minimum requirement.. everything else is just salesmanship" gus

I haven't the slightest idea how this happened. Upon a closure inspection I found that both hemipenes are prolapsed. I don't understand it he has been an aggresive breeder this season for me with no problems. I only can hope at this point he got the job done. The worst part is he is anery het snow and was breeding two of my dbl het snow females and I don't have a back up male. The best I can do for him until his apointment is to put him in a rubbermaid container with an inch of water and towel on the bottom. I will also try the honey. At this point I aam getting desperate. Thanks to everyone for there advice. I will try to keep you posted on the progress.
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Although I have no personal exprience with this I recalled reading about this problem in " The Reproductive Husbandry of Pythons and Boas" by Richard A. Ross and Gerald Marzec. The following is an extract from that book:
On rare occasions, a male snake will be unable to retract one or both hemipenes. The hemipenes become engorged with blood and protrude from the cloaca. The hemipenes rapidly becomes comtaminated with debris from the cage substrate, and may become infected or damaged and ultimately destroyed.
In some instances, herpetologists report successfully re-incerting the hemipenes bu the use of a blunt probe or cotton-tipped swab. However, these techniques are oftenunsuccessful. An alternative sucessful technique consists of making a minute incision or puncture in the hemipenes with the tip of a large bore (18 gague) needle. This releases a small quantity of blood, allowing the engorged hemipenes to return to normal size. This procedure was reported to be successful in a boa constrictor that successfully mated the following year (Huffaker and Maerks pers. comm.).

I hope this is of some help.

I had a male boa that I had purchased as a female. I had this animal for a few months and had not paid a lot of attention to his/her plumbing up until this point....just assuming that it was a female. It was a two year old. One day, I was rearranging enclosures and put this animal in with a female in her huge vision enclosure. At that time she was on Aspen. Nothing eventful happened and the next day I noticed some unusual activity that looked like courting - surprise, surprise!!! Upon closer inspection, I saw an exposed hemipene. I took “him” immediately and put him in some water to soak because the Aspen was stuck to it. Later I put him in the sink with some tweezers and cleaned it the best I could. Then I put him on very sloppy wet paper for the night and made a vet appointment first thing the next morning. At the vet’s we sedated him and cleaned and flushed him over and over. The vet pushed it back in very carefully and put in a couple of sutures on the side to hold it. When I went back to have the stitches removed, the hemipene came back out. So, we sedated him and did the same thing over again, but this time he pulled it all the way out and sure enough there were little bits of Aspen still way down in there. This time when he put the hemipene back in, it stayed after the stitches were removed. That boa went on to father a litter of babies. The vet told me that keeping the tissue clean and moist was the key to it working. If it had started dying, he would have had to amputate it. Now I use newspaper substrate.

I forgot about the honey thing, but that is great advise. We have used honey on horse wounds for years and it works wonders for healing without scarring.

Just got back from the vet. Good news was only one hemipene was prolapsed. Bad news was it had to be amputated. Should make a full recovery and should also still be able to breed. Thanks for everyones concern and advice.
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