Help, egg still attached to female...

[Wh00h0069]

Here is what you do.

1) The female has laid the egg but the egg was stuck to the lining of the ovaduct. So, in essesence the female has prolapsed an egg. What you are going to need is a small pair of cuticle cissors and you are going to cut the egg out of the ovaduct. You'll want to make the cut in the clear part of the ovaduct and cut around the viens. Be careful not to cut the egg as the egg is good and will hatch if incubated. Make a 1.5 inch cut in the ovaduct at the tip of the egg and push it through. This part is easy.

2) Once the egg is out you'll want to manually remove the rest of the eggs in the female. There are 2 ways you are going to do this;

a) One egg at a time you are going to push on the belly of the female and move the egg to the vent. Very slowly you are going to push it out of the vent if the egg is not stuck. That means the egg will freely move when you push it in the female and won't go back into place it just goes where you move it. Once you get all of the eggs out, again one at a time, manually put the ovaduct back inside of the female and keep it as clean as possible. For those slow people this means pushing it back inside the female with your finger.

b) If the egg is stuck and won't come out do the following. This is for eggs that are stuck/twisted in the ovaduct. You can tell they are stuck because when you apply pressure to the egg to move it down to the vent it will spring back into place when you remove the pressure. In this case you'll want to go to a farm supply store and get a 14 or 16 gage needle and a 20-60ml syringe. You are going to jab the female through the belly directly into the stuck egg and drain as much liquid as possible. You may have to empty the syringe a few times so keep the needle part in the female and disconnect the syringe, empty the fluid and then hook it back upto the syringe and keep draining the fluid. Once that is done the female will pass the empty egg shell in a few days. I'm not sure why but they are always able to untwist a stuck egg that has been drained. If you don't remove the egg(s) the female will die. If more than one egg is stuck do all of the stuck eggs this way.

3) If the ovaduct is clean and undamaged you can place it back in the female. If it is all mangled or you accidently pushed out an egg that was twisted in the ovuduct by accident (it'll look like a sausage link) then just cut it clean off at the vent.

4) Place the female on antibiotics to ward off any infections. I'd recommend Fortaz. Most females will be fine afterwards but it doesn't hurt to be on antibiotics.

The female will be able to reproduce. I've had many females where I've had to remove eggs, drain eggs, and also cut out large portions of their ovaduct because of sausage linked eggs in the ovaduct. All go on to produce eggs year after year like nothing happened.

If you take the female to the vet she'll most like not know what to do and end up cutting open the female to remove any stuck eggs. This will most likely kill the female and render to infertile.

Good luck with your female.
Corey

Great info! That should definitely be a sticky.

[Dave763]

Sounds like he might know a thing or two about it. Hope I never have to go through that.

[mrmertz]

I'm late getting to this thread I know...

But if it were me I'd print out the post by Corey AND rush off to the vet with the printed post in hand. That way you are covered either way and if the vet opts to go the route Corey suggests then you have a vet doing the proceedures and not yourself.

"You are going to jab the female through the belly directly into the stuck egg and drain as much liquid as possible" doesn't sound like something I would want to tackle. Corey's adept to it I'm sure...I'm not.

[muddoc]

Excellent post Corey. That may be some of the best advice given in quite some time.

[bads15]

i'd like to give Corey Woods props for his very informative post.
for those of you that don't know Corey or doubt his methods i can say this.
although i haven't personally dealt with him yet, i have spoken and dealt with many people who have dealt with him and every one of them have told me that he is one of the top breeders north of the border.
john

[SnowAngel]

i'd like to give Corey Woods props for his very informative post.
for those of you that don't know Corey or doubt his methods i can say this.
although i haven't personally dealt with him yet, i have spoken and dealt with many people who have dealt with him and every one of them have told me that he is one of the top breeders north of the border.
john

I would just like to say that all my dealings with Corey Woods in the past have surpassed any and ALL expectations! he is a great guy and Canada is definatly glad to have him! Plus my little pied male is from his stock and has gotten MANY MANY compliments!

I am also interested in hearing updates on the poor girl... I am saving this post incase this ever happens to me.

Britany Bell
Alberta, Canada

[WingedWolfPsion]

My sole objection to this advice is that it amounts to surgery done without anaesthesia, which is a horrifying concept.

[SlitherinSisters]

Excellent post Corey. That may be some of the best advice given in quite some time.

I agree! I'm glad Corey is a part of this site!

I also agree with Corey about not even bothering going to the vet because they usually know nothing about reptiles. I went to a "reptile specialist" in our area, specifically in ball pythons, and he told me to sex a ball python you measure the spurs. Needless to say, if I ever run into a problem like that, it's up to me.

Good luck to the OP!

[PigsnPythons]

Any updates?

[jsschrei]

Corey's post is superb.

Any updates???