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Recently one of my two Eastern Indigo females died. Here's an x-ray of how things looked the first time something like this happened to her.

Tissues are being sampled right now to help determine the cause of death.

Doug T

>>Recently one of my two Eastern Indigo females died. Here's an x-ray of how things looked the first time something like this happened to her.
>>
>>Tissues are being sampled right now to help determine the cause of death.
>>
>>Doug T
>>

I feel for ya. I had to take our large female eastern kingsnake to the vet this morning for an emergency. Came in to work and found a note on my desk...check the snake out something is not right with it. :::sigh::: She apparently is egg bound with infertile eggs. There was one that had been expelled but was actually stuck inside the membrane that holds the eggs (i forget the technical term for it lol) ..membrane expelled out still surrounding the egg. The vet aspirated the egg and carefully removed it from the membrane. Now we are on a watch and wait to see if the rest of the eggs will pass ok or if she needs surgery to remove them. Now I can only wonder ...if I had actually chosen to breed her this year with the male instead of wanting to wait just one more year for the much smaller male to put on a bit more size if things would not have turned out like this. Last year, I lost a gorgeous fluorescent amel corn snake to reocurring egg binding problems (again infertile eggs).

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Wyvern

It sounds like your snake has prolasped the oviduct. You probably will be able to save the snake, but I'd bet she'll be infertile from now on.

What could you have done different? If you find out, let me know.

Doug T

Did she lay any eggs then stop?
or did she just not lay at all?

Mine's just NOT laying.

Do you know if the eggs were fertile??

but there have been a couple that went bad. She dropped 6 on her own, 5 remained, 2 were stuck pretty good.

I really hope your girl is ok.

Doug

I actually have 2 couperi and cleo that all appear to be in similar condition.

one of the easterns looks far worse...the eggs are very low.
I'll let you know what happens.

I'm really sorry for your bad luck...I'm just hoping I don't get a lot more here soon.

on a brighter note, My texans are hatching after 84 days...
what the hell? only one is out and it's perfect.

Congrats on your first texan busting out! I hope you'll post pics soon. I can't wait to see mine in person!

I was wondering....Obviously dystocia is a relatively common problem with indigos bred in captivity. I was curious if those of you breeding cribos (YT's, BT's or Uni's) have had similar problems.
I know that eastern indigos often use gopher tortoise or armadillo burrows to lay there eggs in. I was wondering if they may have specific requirements for egg laying that are difficult to duplicate in captivity with a nesting box....which might cause some individuals to retain their eggs.
Do you think that could be a possibility or is it more likely to be attributed to lack of excercise or nutritional differences between captive and wild specimens?
Chris

Nesting Box...Exercise...Nutrition... Could be one, all or none of these causing the problem. My female, after the gross necropsy, was found to have an enormous spleen, which leads my vet to believe that infection was the ultimate cause of demise for my snake. The ability to push the eggs out wasn't an issue with my snake, as 1 or 2 of the eggs were litterally stuck. Tissues are being tested now.

Honestly, my gut feeling is that perhaps I should have bred my female no more than every other year. Running in reproductive high gear may have caused her immune system to fail. That being said, she has become eggbound before, her first clutch, which goes against the "too frequent" breeding thought.

Anyway, I'm thinking that I'm gonna breed the females no more than 1 time per 2 years from here out. We'll see if that helps me. At worst, it'll cut the chances of them egg binding in half...

Doug T

How did it go Dean?