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Old 04-15-2011, 07:08 PM   #1
jsschrei
Eggbound girl. Informative Egg Aspiration Video Included!

This girl laid two slugs and 4 good eggs yesterday afternoon. I gave her until the end of the evening before checking on her and removing her eggs. This was about 8pm. She still had swelling near her vent so I replaced the lid to her eggbox and put her back into her tub.

At about 12:30am I check her again and the same swelling is there in the same spot. Now I am thinking she's eggbound. So I took the eggs she had laid and put her back, hoping she'd pass them overnight when left undisturbed.

Nothing moved along overnight. You can see the swelling between the arrows in this picture before I aspirated. So at noon today (about 19 hours ofter I noticed her clutch) I aspirated the most posterior egg using as aseptic technique as I possibly could. I might have given her more time to deliver the egg if it weren't so close to the cloaca and very swollen and uncomfortable. This is the first experience I've had with egg binding in a snake. I don't know. Did I act too hastily?



After the procedure I blotted the area with some chlorhexadine solution and dabbed a little polysporin on it. Her tub has been thoroughly sanitized and she's on clean unprinted newspaper and paper towels.

After running some errands, I came home and she had passed the deflated egg! I am hoping the other egg will follow without any issues. If it doesn't by tonight I'll aspirate it too. Here's the deflated egg that she passed. You can even see the needle hole in the red circle:



It's a shame because the aspirated egg looked like a fertile one . But her health and safety was my primary concern.

I'll update on the other egg later tonight. Other than looking tired and very uncomfortable in that area, mom is doing good. She's being such a trooper.