please send kiwi good thoughts tomorrow

i have an egg bound crested (kiwi) that is having surgery tomorrow in order to remove the eggs that are inside her. my vet and i have tried all kinds of things to get her to lay on her own to no avail. today he was going to give her a shot of something to attempt to induce her but the egg that is first in line to be laid is now too large to pass through her pelvis.

please send some good vibes toward little kiwi tomorrow. she is an extremely sweet girl and i am really hoping that she will make it through the surgery and then on to a speedy recovery. :please:

awww.... poor little girl! good luck!

Poor Kiwi! I hope the surgery goes well for her, and that she makes a full recovery. Best of luck! :hug:

Awwww! Sounds scary! I sure hope she makes it through!! :hug:

Aww poor Kiwi.. sending lots of good healing vibes her way.

Please keep us updated on how she is doing.

thanks all and i will keep you updated. i'm pretty worried for her. :(

i'll have a candle lit all day long for her.

just heard from the vet's office--kiwi made it through the surgery fine and is starting to wake up. there were 2 eggs blocking passage of the other eggs and a total of 6 eggs were removed (and saved for incubation). my poor girl!

the healing process will be a long one and the effects of the stress from the ordeal a huge factor in whether she is able to pull through. my vet said that usually the surgery is the easy part, it's the weeks following that are the hard part. here's hoping kiwi can stay strong and go on to live a long and happy life in the girls only cage. :)

Wow i bet thats excruciating!!! Good luck

Oh I am so glad to hear she made it through the surgery. Now sending good vibes for recovery...

6 eggs, WOW. Her little body must have been hurtin. I can't imagine that.

So are all the eggs fertile?

Good luck Em! I hope she comes through fine!

thanks all! i don't know if the eggs are all fertile or not. i will take a look tonight when i get kiwi home and settled in and see how they look. after all she had to go through i really hope some of them are fertile.

Yeah that would be nice to have some babies from her last clutch. I hope she has a speedy recovery, and I am sure you will spoil her rotten :D

yay for kiwi!!!

well, kiwi is home and settling in although i'm not sure settled is what she wants to be. i tried to convince her to rest but she's not been too keen on that idea. she is a lot more alert and active than i thought she would be, especially considering that most of her belly had to be opened up and then stitched back together.

what the vet actually found during the surgery was a bit surprising. prior to surgery i could feel 5 eggs inside of her but i suspected there were 6 but the 6th was just too high and between her ribs where i couldn't really feel it well enough to be sure. the vet removed 2 eggs that had dried and fused together, blocking kiwi's pelvis and not allowing any other eggs to pass. he removed 6 eggs that were not dried up and still moist and somewhat viable looking. then he removed about 12 tiny dried eggs that were about the size of BBs. he said it looked like she had gone through several breeding seasons producing those small, infertile eggs and that they had just dried up and stayed in her, however kiwi is only a year and a half old and this was her first breeding season so we aren't really sure why so many of them were in her or how she even managed to ovulate that many times.

i asked the vet remove her uterus and ovaries in order to avoid further complication and he agreed that that would likely be best. the eggs that were saved don't look like crested eggs at all. two are very round instead of oval and others are odd roundish shapes. they are all yellow and don't really have a shell but they are somewhat solid on the outside. i candled them and could see one vein in one of them, but none look like anything i've really ever seen. i have them incubating but unless they change dramatically in the next few days i'm not expecting anything to hatch out of them.

Wow Emily, poor little Kiwi having all that mess of eggs inside her. I'm sure she'll feel better now and hopefully have a troublefree recovery.

Awwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!! Poooooor baby! :oops: Your the bestest gecko mom to get her all fixed up! I'm sure Kiwi makes a full recovery!

I'm glad that kiwi seems to be doing fine for the moment, I hope she continues and heals up nicely. Sounds like a pretty interesting situation you found, I wonder whatt could have caused it as well....

Poor little Kiwi! Can you imagine having all that building up inside of you??? Even recovering from the surgery, she must feel SO much better already!

Glad to hear she is back home now. I bet she is back to normal in no time.

You are awesome Emily :)

The egg thing is pretty interesting, so she is altered right? For lack of a better way to explain it.

I didn't know they could do that to a gecko.

yep, her uterus and ovaries were removed so that there is no chance this can happen again (removing them won't have any ill affects on her). a lot of people have the uterus stitched up and ovaries left in so that they can attempt breeding again the next year--it can be successful, but i wanted to eliminate all chance of future egg binding as it's just not worth it to me to risk her health so i can get some babies out of her.

she lost 12 grams as a result of the surgery (which was all eggs as the vet said she didn't lose any blood) and she looks pretty thin but much better. she is breathing better now too--she had started having trouble breathing because the eggs were pressing on her lungs. tomorrow she gets to have food again and i'm crossing my fingers that she'll eat on her own again--i have been hand feeding her by basically putting drops of food into the sides of her mouth a little at a time. i can't blame her though--with all those eggs pressing on her stomach she just wasn't hungry.

Wow, I didn't know they could do that. Well I knew it was possible, but I hadn't heard of someone doing it. I don't blame you for not wanting to breed her again, not worth the risk at all. Plus just the thought of her having to go through it again is sad.

So glad that she's doing better.... 12 g's! That's a lot for her to have been hauling around, poor momma! :oops: Again, kudos to you Emily!!! :sunny:

Wow, I'm glad she's doing better now emily. I'll be sending good healing vibes your way.

just a small update: kiwi spent the day yesterday and most of the night in a hide i have on the bottom of her quarantine style recovery enclosure. i was glad to see her resting but a little concerned that she really didn't move at all for so long. well, this morning i found her sitting on top of the hide looking around. :) thanks all for the healing vibes--so far they are working! :D

oh wow... i'm sooo happy to hear she's okay!!!