Handling Gravid Females

[ClarkT]

It seems a bit obvious not to handle gravid females much, but will handling too much cause them to re-absorb, have slugs, or get egg-bound?

Also, if you palpate for follicles and feel them, do you palpate again? If one did palpate later on, does it/will it affect the eggs?

[snakesRkewl]

It seems a bit obvious not to handle gravid females much, but will handling too much cause them to re-absorb, have slugs, or get egg-bound?

You answered your own question, handling is kept to a minimum.
Eggs aren't re-absorbed and I doubt slugs are a result of handling and you shouldn't be messing with them much just before egg dropping but I also doubt handling some would cause egg binding.

Also, if you palpate for follicles and feel them, do you palpate again? If one did palpate later on, does it/will it affect the eggs?

As long as your careful it doesn't hurt to palpate, but once you know how many there is it's not really necessary to continue to.

[Lolo76]

I agree - minimal handling is best, but I doubt you'd kill the eggs by holding her. I've only had one gravid female so far, and I tried to leave her alone as much as possible... just handling when I cleaned, for the most part. She was kinda cranky anyway!

[ClarkT]

Yeah, cranky is the word. The one I suspect may be gravid sure is CRANKY! She's a doll, still, too.

The palpate again question is more because I'm not sure she's gravid. She was paired before we got her, and the guy didn't "see" any lockups, but I think she ovulated, based on palpating. But, I'd like to try again and make sure. But that's been a couple weeks now. Just don't want to possibly harm any eggs that may be in there.

[Evilme5229]

To tell you the truth, since I was a first time breeder and I didn't know if she was really gravid until my distributor looked at her (a week before she laid her eggs). She was handle ALOT; a lot more than I would have if I would have know shes was gravid. She had 4 healthy and happy babies.

But for me, I know what to look for and I will be leaving my females alone for the future though. But she didn't have any complications to my mistake. lol.