Reptile & Amphibian Forums

The first time eastern girl that had dystocia is doing great...Has eaten twice and doing well..

My TX girl(Yo DT!)threw 3 slugs then became egg bound...She had much more trouble...Took a lot of manipulation to extract the remaining slugs and I really thought she might become septic from the extreme problems and the eggs really took her reserves away...This was about 3 weeks ago..I did the same things with her and last night she ate a chicken leg! Looks like she'll be OK...Not out of the woods completely, as she need to put on serious weight, but feeding is a great sign...

Newcomers, look back a few weeks for details and see Feb/Mar 2003 posts for last years disaster...

I think more than ever the answer is get the dang problem out as soon as possible...This year I just decided that with all we do to humans in delivering babies, that the same thing shouldn't be much worse for a big snake and went for didn't fart around with a vet who was too cautious because of the value of the animal..I think the die of kidney failure caused by the obstructing eggs blocking the ureter from excreting..

So a good news bad news year here...No eggs, but the females didn't die...CG
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Carl W Gossett
Garage Door Herps
Monument,Colorado...northern territory of the Great Republic of Texas

Sorry to hear the loss of that clutch. But glad to hear she's feeding! Hope she makes it ! I'm rootn for ya! Keep us posted.
Tony.

Carl eyc al,...

I have an eggbound female eastern indigo, who, upon going to the vet, was prescribed a dose of Oxytocin to encourage uterine contractions. The vet also aspirated the first two eggs that were stuck inside her, through her abdominal weall, via syringe. He was VERY CAUTIOUS and didnt take to mcuh fluid out of the giant eggs. When she was taken home, and the Oxytocin administered, nothing happened. Later(Approximately 48 hrs later) a good friend of mine and I aspirated the eggs via the abdominal wall useing a syringe, but we aspirated ALL of them and took the bulk of the yolk out of each one.

Whether the vet did what he did so as to err on the cautious partially not as invasive side is unknown. Or if he did it because he knew it would cause a repeat visit(Read: More money) I dont know, but in the end, the more aggresive approach seemed to work MUCH better, and after the second set of aspirations of all the eggs present in her, she passed all of them within a 24 hr period. So...I concur with Carl, aggressive approaches seem to work best with eggbound Drymarchon, or in this case Eastern Indigos.

* Cheers*

Fred Albury
AZTEC REPTILES