A little history... Female laid 7 eggs on 5/22 (they all look infertile like her previous 2 clutches last year). I could tell she still had a few more left in her so I left the egg box in the cage. On 5/30 she laid 2 more eggs and was definitely still retaining at least 2 eggs- one was quite large from the external appearance. I figured I'd give her a little more time and see if she could pass them. On 6/6 I tried to gently manually apply pressure to the eggs to help her expell them with no luck. I was concerned that if I applied too much pressure I might injure her and the large egg right above the cloaca won't budge. Made an appt. with the vet for tonight (6:45pm) but I'm hoping for some suggestions to help the vet with his treatment. I don't know his experience level with aspiration and I'm concerned that he'll recommend surgery. If surgery is the appropriate treatment, I'll happily do that but I feel that other options may be less traumatic and costly. Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Lora
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Eggbound African House snake- Help please
Replies (2)
I guess I didn't see this before your vet visit. Sorry. The most common approach this this is to try drugs to induce egg laying. With an egg as large as you describe, however, a better approach would be either evacuating the contents of the eggs via a hypodermic needle and syringe and then manually expressing the eggs, or surgery.
The vet was able to lubricate and express 2 of the 3 eggs that were retained. I'm still waiting to see if she'll lay the final egg on her own as it appears more normally sized. I do appreciate the response!
Lora
