Prolapsed Hemipene!

It's time for Home Veterinarian Care Part II, with Tim.
NOTE: These episodes are not planned! LOL

Disclaimer: I did not act alone in this diagnosis. I consulted with two of my mentor home Veternarians before applying this treatment (Sean Bradley and Adam Wysocki). The story is below.

I went to the snake room this evening to put some males in with females. I got through about 15 pairings, and got to the last male. Skippy the BumbleBee was scheduled togoin with the currently unnamed Lemon Blast female #2. Well, I slid out the tub and picked up Skippy. OH NO. What is that. A prolapsed hemipene. What now?

Unfortunately I did not get pictures of the scene when I first found it, but his hemipene was extremely engorged, and was very dry looking. Upon inspecting a little closer (which means touching it), the "scab", for lack of a better term, started to fall off. The scab casing came off pretty easily to reveal the soft tissue. However, this did leave a small bit of blood as well. The first step was to rinse it off, and try to get some water on it and remoisten it. I then emptied his tub of aspen bedding and replaced it with moist paper towels. This was to try and keep anything from aggravating the problem further, and keep his hemipene from drying out and falling off.

At this point, I made my two phone calls (to the Veteranarian mentors) and concocted a course of treatment, and of course got the camera for visual documentation of the event. Below are the pictures of the prolapsed hemipene.

p.s. Sean said not to worry, that is why God gave them 2. However, we are going to try and save this one as well, and don't want any chance of infection from an exposed organ.

http://www.baileyreptiles.com/pics/pene1.jpg

http://www.baileyreptiles.com/pics/pene2.jpg

The recommended treatment was as follows. Mix up a sugar/water paste. Meaning, do not dissolve all of the sugar, but make a very pasty concotion of water and sugar. Sugar is hydrophilic (meaning it loves water and absorbs as much as possible). Like when you leave a sucker in your mouth for a while, your inner cheeks get wrinkly. Sugar, like salt, is a dessicant, and will dry out tissue. After the paste is mixed, take the male by the tail, and palpate the animal backwards (from tail towards head). The reason for this, is the muscles that control the penes are on the opposite side of the cloaca from the hemipenes. Palpate them in an effort to stretch them out. At the same time, attempt to push the hemipene vback into the cloacal vent. After you have got the pene as far back in as possible, liberally spread the paste onto the remaining pene. This will hopefully help toshrink the pene, and allow the animal to pull the hemipene back into the body.

If it is still hanging out tomorrow, we will apply the same treatment, untilthe problem is resolved. I will update everyone over the course of the next week, as to the outcome of this event. My plan at the moment is to remove him from the breeding program, unless he appears to be normal after a minimum of 3 weeks, and I can manually evert his penes, and he retracts them on his own. I will keep a record here as to how the progress goes over the next month ( and intonext season if need be).

I hope this may help someone one day with what I deem as a rare occurance. Specail thanks to Sean and Adam for the wisdom.

Signed,
Dr. Tim (LOL)

Great post Tim, I hope things clear up by tomorrow. :gj:

Great information Tim. I hope the little dude makes a full recovery.

Awsome post thanks a lot Tim. Special thanks to your medical consults as well... hehe

I hope everythign goes well . but you must inform your snake the blue pill was not for him :rolleye2:

I hope he gets better! And clip those nails...

wow. hope the little dude recovers soon.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Beardedragon

I hope he gets better! And clip those nails...

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Thanks Matt. Those nails are for removing stuck sheds. So they typically stay a bit long.

I hope he makes a full recovery and thanks Tim for the educational thread.

You know it's funny but I remember reading a book years ago about a country vet and one of his "cures" for prolapsed uterus in sows after they gave birth was to pour sugar on the organ to help shrink it before manipulating it back inside the animal. Hope it works on snakes too.

I hope the sugar does its job and he is able to retract it!