Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my 5 year old 4.5' cali laid 12 huge eggs yesterday and has at least one retained at the moment. She lost a considerable amount of weight and girth. This was her first breeding and she was in very good shape prior to breeding but she looks like a scrawny worm now. When is a good time to resume feeding and should I start with a smaller meal initially.

Also, in regards to her retained egg, when I checked on her last night she was out of the egg box with her tail in the air and the edge of the egg visable at the vent. I checked back a short time later and there was no egg to be found and she was flat at the vent but had a noticable lump at mid-body. Would an egg that was visable at the vent retract all the way up to mid-body or is it possible she delivered it and ate it? The lump appears to be where a meal if she had eaten. This is my first encounter with breeding cali's and any advice will be helpfull.

I would not feed her right away, since it seems likely she recently had a meal. I would wait a couple of days to see if the "meal" gets smaller... if the lump gets smaller, like she's digesting it, then fine, otherwise if it doesn't get smaller you might be worried. Feeding her now might just complicate figuring out what happened. I have heard of this sort of thing happening, but of course I am not the biggest expert. But in my opinion, based on your description, the likelihood is that she had a snake of her egg. Normally without these complications I give them a few hours and then offer then a smaller than normal meal. My girl laid 15 huge eggs last Sunday/Monday (took 16 hours) and by the end of Monday I offered her a couple of hoppers, which she gulped down. Five days later I fed her a small rat, and she chowed down on that too.

Luckily for me I have not yet had the experience of retained (or consumed) eggs, and I hope to never learn enough to be good at giving advice about what to do.
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~Sasheena