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Benign neglect, when to say when?

Elaphe_Mo

Elaphe_Mo

New member
Well I posted a bit ago how my boyfriend started vacuuming around my gravid females right before they were about to lay. I don't know whether it was the reason or not, but the 2 who have started laying have had problems. One has just been really slow, laying 1-3 eggs per day, and I'm going to just let her go until she stops, since it seems she's just resting between laying them.

I am worried about my amel stripe though, she laid 5 eggs as of Saturday, and then just stopped. Now there are at least 8 more visible, but they aren't going anywhere. I tried the benign neglect but I'd like to know when to say enough and take her to a vet. Since yesterday she has taken to cruising around her cage again, and this morning when I checked on her she was on top of her egg box instead of in it. The eggs haven't hardened or anything yet but they are growing and I'm afraid soon she may not be able to force them out.
 
Hey

My female who retained one egg went 8 days before she finally passed the last egg. What I did with her was I checked on her maybe once or twice a day during the ordeal, fed her every 3 days or so to put weight back on her, and so forth. She went into a shed cycle maybe Sunday sometime (that's when I noticed anyways) and passed the egg Monday night sometime outside of her nest box. Strangely during the whole eggbound period she avoided her nest box the entire time! Now that she's passed the egg she's once again in her nest box (probably to help with the shed cycle). So to answer your question I would say maybe 2 weeks max before I would eventually intervene. That's what I was planning with my snake anyways. Fortunately she laid before then.

Some things I would recommend with yours: Is she eating? If she is still willing to eat feed her several smaller then normal food items just to keep her strength up. Make sure you offer water as well. If she is unhappy with the nest box perhaps move it, try another one, anything that might satisfy her. Since she is being active it sounds like she is nest searching. Fill the nest box almost to the brim with material, and give her as much privacy as possible.

Good Luck. I hope she settles down and lays for ya.
Jcam99
 
I don't know what is up with her but she is already starting to go cloudy for her "post-lay" shed cycle. I've had girls have 1 or 2 eggs left, but she is literally still half full of eggs :eek: I've tried offering her tiny food items but she's been refusing since a couple weeks before she started. I'm glad to know I can give her a bit more time. I'd just feel better if she was dropping one every once in a while like my snow has been.
 
Yeah I know it is frustrating, not to mention worriesome. Have you palpated her to see if perhaps there is an egg that is too large around the vent area? Still, I would think if that were the problem you would see her straining with her tail raised, trying to push it out but having no luck. It sounds to me like she is just unhappy with her nesting options. Go ahead and palpate her real quick if you haven't done already to see if that could possibly be the problem. Also, are the eggs right at the vent or located higher up? If they're not at the vent it is possible she just isn't ready to lay, and what you saw laid were slugs?? I've heard of that happening before. When was she last mated?

Sorry I wish I was more helpful.
Jared
 
I don't even need to palpate, those eggs are visible bulges at this point. The first one is about 1.5 cm up from her vent. I bred her to my car mot earlier this spring. The first 5 eggs she laid were all good. From the size of them I'm assuming the ones she still has in her are too. The snow who is slowly finishing up laid 1 fertile egg and so far 20 slugs. Last year she laid all slugs, but the 2 times before she had 100% fertile eggs. Weird girl. I almost threw the good one away because I had just been removing the slugs when I found them (gross things) and didn't expect 1 fertile egg in the middle of the batch. I sincerely hope it isn't the male's fault, as he is my lone pewter male and I also bred him to my lav this year :awcrap:

Anyways thanks for listening to my worries!
 
No problem listening, I know how worriesome and stuff it can get. It sounds to me like she is definitely ready to lay. I would make sure the nestbox is set up good (filled nearly to the brim, warm, moist, etc) and leave her be. One thing I noticed with my female when I was worried about her even laying eggs was once I went out of town and stayed gone all night partying when I got back at like 2 am she was laying, and when she laid the eggbound slug she didn't do it until again I was out of town and partying and didn't come home til late. So I guess me being away partying makes her willing to lay. I think a lot of mine's problem was see I keep my snakes in the computer room, and I do my schoolwork in here too, and I'm in here pretty late sometimes writing papers or whatever. I dont always look at them but they undoubtably see me around and I think to a gravid female that just makes them nervous, even though she is the tamest snake I've ever had. So I don't know how you have your snakes set up or where but I would strongly recommend staying totally away from them for lengthy periods, go out and do other things and try really hard to forget they even exist. Then when you remember a day later or so and come in you cna be pleasantly surprised :)

Just a thought, keep posting.
Later
Jcam99
 
Update

Some good news and some bad news. Good news is my snow is finally done after more than a week of dropping only 1 or 2 eggs a day.

Bad news is she laid 22-23 slugs (can't remember exact count), and only 1 fertile egg.

Extra bad news is the amel stripe hasn't dropped a single egg since last friday. Poor girl. :crying:
 
Mo,

so sorry to hear your bad news. I hope things all turn out well for the amel stripe,

Best wishes, Skye
 
Update

Well my amel stripe laid a total of 8 eggs. Then she just gave up. I took her in to the vet yesterday since she still had 9 inside her. Amazingly he was able to get them all out. Now she is on antibiotics and hopefully will make a full recovery.

Some things the vet mentioned that I thought people might be interested in: Oxytocin usually will only work in a short window around when the snake first starts laying. If the eggs are left in long enough, they may adhere to the oviduct, and possibly cause damage to it.

Anyway I am keeping my fingers crossed that she pulls through ok (she still isn't interested in food yet), and that my last gravid girl makes it through this season without any complications!
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard that stripe females often end up egg-bound for no apparent reason.

I can't remember where I heard this or from whom, but it was strong enough advice at the time that I never got a striped female for my male.

Just curious if there's any proof to back that up, or if anyone else has heard the same story.


Hopefully your female will be ok. At least the vet did get the eggs out successfully. I'd let her have the year off next year and definitely post a "No Vacuuming" sign on the door. ;)
 
As far as Stripes are concerned, I haven't heard that they are prone to being egg bound. My extremely small sample (ONE snake, ONE clutch) says it is not true. (which I know is not a large enough sample). But I can share my one experience... Athena is the smallest female corn I bred this year. AFterwards I had doubts and misgivings, and wished I'd decided differently, but the deed was done. Poor little girl! I felt awful and was very worried. But in fact, she did brilliantly. She had 12 eggs altogether, 6 slugs, and 6 viable eggs. She did a good job and recuperated faster than the other two female corns. She's Anery Striped and seemed to do a very good job without any hitches whatsoever. She did pass an early slug a few days before laying her clutch, but I didn't worry that she was eggbound, and in her time she produced her clutch. I'm excited for the few that she did produce, as they should all be normal striped babies.

I would love to hear from others about their experiences with striped corns, see if it's proven out anecdotally. Also interesting to note the difference between motley stripe and normal stripe, to see if there is a connection there.
 
Sorry to hear about all the slugs but at least yuo still have the females and you can try different things to boost fertility next year. I hope your amel stripe pulls through and gets back to normal weight soon :)

I have not heard anything about stripe females getting egg bound easily but then i don't own any stripes... i have heard of low fertility rates in blood reds though.
 
I manipulated the last 4 eggs out

My girl had laid one or two small eggs a day over the last 13 days. finally, there was a large swelling by the vent for a week. I couldn't take the suspense any longer so last night I took her by the tail and with gentle but forceful pressure pushed above the swelling towards the vent. Once I notices the vent open it took a cople tries, but one heck of a large egg popped out. I could feel several more small eggs in her so I worked them out the same way. Three more small eggs came out. I tell you she looked much relieved. I hope I did the right thing.
 
Panda, I'm sure you did fine.
Its actually a recommended practice.
Congratulations.
I have heard that most of the time the bound eggs are slugs. Was that the case?

Its said that females who get more exercise don't get egg-bound. You may want to try larger cages so they can roam more, or simply more handling.
 
Actually most of her eggs don't look good. Most have gotten some green spots on them. Of the 15 she laid, possibly three are good. The one that was stuck is very large and looks good. She is my most aggresive corn and is good size for her two years of age. I think a larger cage is in oder. I checked on her at noon time today and she looks fine.
 
My 16 year old is just about to lay a clutch of slugs (she's rarely produced fertile eggs, even when mated). She passed two really small ones, about one-third the size of a normal fertile egg, two days ago. Apart from that she's showing no signs of laying the rest. She usually settles in a laying tub for at least four days before she lays and at the moment she's still moving about, behaving normally, as though she doesn't have a care in the world.

In short, she's fine so far but I'm a nervous wreck!
 
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