Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello Bryan...

Let me first congratulate you on the enormous clutch of eggs... what a nice surprise! Second I would like to console you for the panic and anxiety you went through... I really understand how you felt as I had a similar situation last year...

The story starts with me breeding a female normal to an Albino male. Everything went great, breeding, ovulation and post ovulation activity. On March 25th 2004 I walked in on the female laying her first egg... so naturally I left her alone. A few hours later I checked on her to find 1 lone egg in the front of her cage. She kicked it out!! Oh no... there were no more eggs?!?

So I placed the lone egg back inside her coils and she rolled it out about 15 minutes later. I really didn't understand this because her projected lay date was about that time (March 25-26th). Several days went by with NO MORE EGGS?? I placed the lone egg in the incubator shortly after she kicked it out the second time. It was doing great... candled well and had nice color and mass. Well... Brian Barczyk got a phone call (poor Brian is all of our go-to guy I guess HAHA) He stated that at that time he never had a female get "egg bound" so I don't think either of us knew what was up at that time. A few days later I had a conversation (in a chat room I believe) with Kevin and Kara @ NERD and they told me they had several females with a twisted oviduct that had to be operated on. It would have been a shame to lose the eggs but a greater shame to lose the female as she was a BIG one. I decided to pull a "colubrid breeder" trick and aspirate the egg...

I use an 18ga needle on a large syringe and I insert the needle into the females ventral surface under the egg closest to the vent, piercing the egg then draining most of the egg fluid. This is a common practice for us with the Corn Snakes. Every year we save about 2-3 females from death by this aspiration technique. So here I go... my first aspiration of a Ball Python. Am I killing a 100% Het. Albino female baby before she is formed? My luck... probably so.

Well... if you are still following me now... The aspiration didn't seem to help. Several days later on April 1st 2004 she laid her remaining 10 eggs in a pile like it was any other day. She didn't kick any of them out and there on the side of the clutch was a cute little egg. Small but PERFECT in every way... yep... it is the egg that I aspirated! It was still good?? How can that be... I remove like 8cc of egg fliud. I didn't kill the embryo?? I guess not...

So I put the mass in the incubation container with the lone egg that got kicked out. On April 5th 2004 (5 days after the laying of the rest of the clutch) the lone egg died. OH GREAT! I'm thinking... now watch the whole clutch die! Well they didn't... on May 27th 2004 I hatched 6.4 100% Het. Albinos including one cute little 42 gram male who was nearly pierced with a needle the size of himself at the time!

Moral of the story... I still don't know JACK about snakes! HAHA I mean there are so many little signs that can be interpreted different ways. What if she had a twisted oviduct like Kevin and Kara had mentioned? Would I have waited too long and lost it all? It's just really freaky when you have a big beautiful female that is at risk.

Also... how long is too long? I had a female last year lay eggs at 42 days after P.O.S. So far this year I have had eggs as early as 24 days after P.O.S. and as late as 37 days after. Actually waiting on a Pin x Normal clutch now that is already on day 37 after P.O.S. WHAT THE HELL?!?

All right then... this is really long and I'm sure you don't want to witness my psychotic break in action. So with that I wish you all luck and hope that you only get scared by certain events and you don't lose from them. I'd rather be on edge for a few days than be without a female that lays over 10 eggs.

Good Luck and Good Bye!
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Sean Bradley
Owner : EbN
www.ExoticsByNature.com
www.BallPythonMorphs.com
www.CornSnakeMorphs.com

This is such valuable information! if every good breeder would share their negative experiences as well as their positive ones for all to benefit!

Thanks for sharing

Really interesting story Sean,thanks for posting it. I found it particularly amazing that the partially aspirated egg survived.Good luck with that pinstripe clutch!!! Best wishes,Mark Petros BallPython777.com

yep...they will at times lay duds before the rest of the clutch..........then a whole good batch later...and even at times throw more duds at a later date than the good batch..

does that make sence?...

and how does their body know to throw out duds early........?

.......have fun.........

........oh.....you can aspirate a corn egg (for example) and take out 3 cc fluid....then after a couple days the egg will regrow back into full size or even bigger.....I hate stuck eggs.....

some snakes (corn again) will die in 3 days if the eggs get stuck even one or two...and yet others will carry around a dead egg for a month and more till it comes out..*(rumored of laying a dud the next year along with the following years' good eggs).proven or not more than one person tells me this..........dried up hard dead egg along with this years good ones.......?.....sounds true yet very odd.....
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www.ballpython.ca

First of all you are 100% right about Brian getting phone calls with problems but he is truly a GREAT guy that loves to help people.. Anyways, I almost asperated the first egg in her but I was very leary about doing that with her and the clutch. I was told to wait and that is what I did, Boy am I sure glad I did..
With my luck there is no telling what may of happened LOL. Anyways it is now day 6 for the first egg and its still doing great! You know I actually forgot to add in my post that the female also kicked the egg to the side.. I wonder if they know something we dont? Sean give me a call tommorow morning if you get the chance..

Bryan