Prevent dystocia, egg binding?

[NiklasTyreso]

How do you prevent dystocia, egg binding?

I have an adult female that last year had dystocia, she was egg bound, at the previous owners facility.

I bought her in the december and she just got about 10 days winter rest, so it is not sure she will breed this season. I have had her together with a young unproven male but have not seen any mating (but sometimes you get clutches without seeing the mating).

She did not look thin when I bought her, but when probing with the fingers on her belly it felt like the belly were rather empty, then. Now she starts to have a normal belly. She have a great feeding drive! I feed her once a week.

Vitamins
Twice she has got vitamin D powder (in the mouse mouth) as vitamin D prevents egg binding in birds.
Later this spring I will also give her multivitamins.

Exercise
She has a normal sized terrarium to move in, but I think it might be a good idea to exercise her outside the terrarium some minutes twice a week to develop more muscles, as muscles are needed to pass the eggs. I get the impression she is rather lazy but she do have obvious muscles when she cling to my arm.

Is it anything more I can do to prevent egg binding?

 

[cornsnakeforsale_com]

Size is the most important thing, how big is she?

General good health will obviously help her produce and pass eggs.

I have a theory about live prey as well. I believe when they have to constrict they strengthen their muscles and are more healthy. That's a can of worms though and you'll surely hear all the advice about not doing that.

 

[NiklasTyreso]

She is about 1,3 meter (more than 4 feet). She have a mature look without looking old.

Constrikting live food is probably a good exercise.

 

[cornsnakeforsale_com]

weight in grams now (and estimated from last year)?

 

[Shiari]

Giving her exercise time on stairs or swimming, or 'treadmilling' her through your hands on a regular basis will probably provide more exercise than live food, plus without the risks of bites and parasites. And many adult corns will constrict f/t prey anyways, so that argument is rather spurious.

That said, I personally would not feel comfortable breeding a female with a history of egg-binding. I, in fact, have a female with an ancient stuck egg (she can pass feces fine) who is going into surgery tomorrow to remove said egg so that if she slugs out again she won't back up and die. But I'm petrified she'll get egg bound again either way and so while she's a stunning girl I am NEVER going to breed her. She gets to be a beloved pet.

 

[NiklasTyreso]

weight in grams now (and estimated from last year)?

I do not have a scale to measure weight, but here is a pic of how she looked when I bought her.
You can not see that her belly felt were rather empty, but she was not (and is not) thin.

 

[NiklasTyreso]

I personally would not feel comfortable breeding a female with a history of egg-binding.

Dystocia is certainly not a merit!

Even if egg bound / dystocia will not repeat in a next clutch (if treated well with exercise and vitamines), and even thou it is probably not a simple genetic trait, snakes that develop to week muscles in captivity to lay eggs have a trait you do not want to select for.

Not to breed snakes that need special food/exercise/care is a good advice.

 

[cornsnakeforsale_com]

I wouldn't necessarily call it a "trait" to avoid, I would call it less than optimum breeding health, probably contributed to by being kept in captivity. If you're worried about bites you can thump them before putting them in or feed small rats that can't really bite. It's not hard to find healthy feeders or breed some of your own. The zombie dance might work ok, but they usually don't constrict for very long that way.

There's lots of good info in these forums about this topic, here's a nice quote from Carol about it, "I think egg binding is mainly caused by females being bred to young, lack of exercise, and lack of calcium. I think all the climbing, searching for food and constricting really helps even younger corns to be able to handle a clutch of eggs. I am really starting to lean towards providing a little more vertical space for my up and coming females. And in my own findings I think power feeding them does them a diservice because they are never hungery enough to search for food and become fat."

Makes me think perhaps your snake is overweight. It's hard to tell in the picture.

And of course, when in doubt don't breed.

 

[Rich Z]

One thing that should be kept in mind is that the eggs within the female are growing all the time once formed. So with that in mind, the sooner the female passes them, the easier it will be on her. I've heard a lot of people say that a female will normally lay 10 days after her pre-egglaying shed. Personally, I believe that if an optimum egg laying environment is presented to a female she will lay MUCH sooner than that. If your female is prowling around, even in and out of the egg laying container you prepared for her, that means she is not happy with is available and is looking for something better. I believe that the 10 days that many people speak of is the point where a female will most likely give up looking for a better place and decide to lay the eggs anyway, anywhere. Which sometimes can even be in the water dish, since at that point she has stopped being too discriminatory about it, and it seems as good a place as any to her.

When providing an egg laying container, pack the medium pretty tightly all the way to the top. Not rock solid, but firmly enough that the female has to actively burrow in through the hole you provided. The female wants to believe that not only has she found a spot that has the proper moisture content, but she also wants a place that she will feel that the eggs will be as secure from predators as practical. YOU have to provide this for her as her options are limited by what she can find within her cage. She WILL normally try to find such a place. Believe me, if there is a way out of that cage in her search, she WILL find it, and then you have a gravid snake loose looking for someplace to lay her eggs.

If satisfactory conditions are found, it's not at all unusual for a female to lay 5 or 6 days after that shed. I once read an article by someone (the name escapes me at the moment, and I think this was in reference to tri-colored kings and milks) who used to set up layers of dampened medium in 5 gallon buckets and introduced the female to that environment. She would immediately burrow into the medium till she reached the depth she wanted, and often lay her eggs within 3 days. Remember that a female carrying eggs is very vulnerable and is carrying her next generation. All her eggs are in one basket, so to speak. So it is in the best interests of all involved to shed those eggs as soon as possible to try to minimize the risk of a predator snagging her and all those future offspring. In the wild, it is just not likely that a female corn carrying a load of eggs is going to be prowling all over the countryside, exposed to predators, any longer than absolutely necessary. So if you provide an OPTIMUM laying condition for her, she will normally take advantage of that pretty quickly.

But the truth of the matter is, that some females will egg bind regardless of what you try to do. Insanity is obviously not limited to humans. The more animals you work with, the more opportunities that are provided for statistics to slap you with mishaps and disappointments. I'll tell you, one of the most disheartening things you will ever see working with these critters is to be checking on the females due to lay and find one with her oviducts prolapsed all over the cage, with the eggs plainly visible through the membranes. Believe me, this will seriously ruin your day.

 

[NiklasTyreso]

Thanks Rich Z for your point to have a good nesting box early after pre lay shed to make the female lay the eggs earlier, when they ar not to big.

My snakes use to lay eggs in late may or early june, so I use to collect sphagnum moss (in the wood) for nest boxes in early may.