Saving a female that was egg bound

[Ace of Snakes]

I know I know, this picture is pretty horrible but hear us out. We bred our spark male to a pastel enchi female. The female was 2500 grams easy and three years old. Everything went as planned and she became gravid. One her due date, she laid 7 healthy eggs but we noticed she was not finished. After a couple days of her not laying the other 2 eggs, we became concerned and we really started paying attention to her overall health. After about a week, we decided to soak her to see if that would help. I was able to move the eggs inside her about a inch either way without problem but not any further since I didn't want to apply too much pressure and stress her out any more then I had to. Mornings and nights would pass with out seeing those last eggs becoming more and more concerned. Today makes 55 days she has had those eggs in her and something was apparently wrong. Action had to happen now before the eggs rotted inside her. We figured she was either twisted inside or something else. My wife and I decided today would be the day so we took a towl and wrapped it around her head to keep her as calm and loose as possible. We then took the largest probe we could find to help crown the egg when it was near her vent. I applied pressure and it was really hard since we didn't want to hurt her but knowing had we left the eggs, she would have died. I would compare the experience to squeezing a tooth paste tube that was 90% blocked. It was tuff, I'm not going to lie. My wife held her tail and as I moved the egg with my fingers along the belly part being careful not to break any ribs, got the egg or what ever it was to crown. When it popped out, we were shocked to see it was a egg with out a shell. The 2nd egg came out super easy right after deflated but not rotten. A good sign! A sigh of relief came upon us and I am sure the female was feeling better. We then noticed one more egg in her. We had only thought there was 2 to be honest. I carefully moved this last one as well and out it came with ease. This egg was perfect and had veins for which we put with the rest of her clutch laid 25 days earlier. I know with out a doubt had we not taking action, this female would have died. So tonight is a great night, we saved our female and we saved a baby.

[carlson]

Seen this on FB yesterday. Glad you got them out of her! First egg is crazy looking, is there no shell on it then just a membrane? Hope the other hatches. With it being that far behind the others will it hatch later then? Like while stuck in momma does it grow like its sibblings? Happy she's good now hope all is well from here on

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk 2

[alykoz]

Cool story! Glad everything turned out okay

[Flikky]

Interesting. Guess you never know what's going to happen. Glad she's okay

[MrLang]

Bold series of actions. You should attach some kind of "I would recommend other keepers go to a vet" or something to this post.


Glad everything worked out so far.

[zwhitman]

This is not a good way to "save" an egg bound female snake. You may have gotten away with it this time, we don't know for sure yet. She may still die in a few days and her reproductive tract may be permanently damaged. I really hope not.

There are many causes of dystocia (in this case an abnormal egg) and many of them can not be fixed just by squeezing out the eggs. This snake may have laid her clutch on her own (and cheaply) with some calcium and oxytosin injections. And if that failed a veterinarian would have sedated or anesthetized the snake to make palpating the eggs out easier, much less risky, and much less painful for the snake. Surgery would be a last resort. This is a valuable breeding animal and as far as I am concerned there is no excuse not to take this snake to a vet and pay a couple hundred bucks to get this taken care of in a humane way that is much more likely to produce a healthy fertile snake at the end. One that could easily make that money back over her breeding lifetime.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen people try and palpate eggs out of a female only to find that they palpated out her entire oviduct ruining her breeding potential forever. I have seen people tear open the cloaca or prolapse other organs. I have seen snakes die after palpating stuck eggs, likely due to internal bleeding or infection from rupturing an abnormal or rotten egg into the coelomic cavity.

Again I am glad your snake appears OK. And I hope that she will continue to breed for you next year. But please do not post this as an example of what to do with an egg bound snake because you were one of the lucky ones that got away with it.

[zwhitman]

In fact, you don't have to go too far to find out why this is a bad idea...

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...-What-is-this-!!!

[Robyn@SYR]

Sometimes females are in egg-crisis, and drastic steps need to be taken. We have had to drain retained eggs while still inside the female, using a 100cc syringe with a large gauge needle, and most of the time it has worked. But scary, always scary, and still very rare to happen.

Thanks for sharing this. I hope that your female recovers 100%, best of luck!