Female eastern with swelling....

I know iguanas and chameleons can become egg bound without breeding, but I didn't think indigos could. Now I'm pretty sure they can!

This snake is housed in a stack of cages with a male in the cage below her. He mated with the female that lives above her enlosure, but was not introduced to the snake that is now eggbound. The snake he mated with never became gravid.

Could the mating in close proximity produce hormonal changes in the virgin female? Since infertile eggs are laid, what exactly is the trigger for egg formation in indigos? Physical stimulation of mating? Pheremones?

I sincerely hope to get a look a them...soon! Sigh....

Hi all, interesting discussion, sry i've been away on other matters for a few days. My first guess was impaction but an oversized egg is an interesting point about the snake's biology. It may indeed be possible that indigos can produce eggs without mating and juvenile or first time producers of other snake species are prone to problems first time round. Having only just aquired my male dry i cannot speak about this species but can draw some parralells with other species.
Snakes are very much governed by seasonal changes in order to gear them up for the mating season, and coupled with the pheromone levels all around her during previous matings may have confused her somewhat. Folicles are usually developed and then re absorbed if not fertilized, most of the time.....
The other great thing about snakes are they are always surprising us, there is a record of parthenogenesis in a Burmese Python ( Python molurus bivittatus) at a zoo in Holland, where the snake produced a clutch of eggs that were fertile and hatched even though the snake had never been mixed with a male! DNA analysis of the hatchlings showed they were exact clones of the mother. Who knows what indigos can do if given the right stimuli.
We recently removed an oversized egg from a Beaded Lizard by draining the egg and then removing the collapsed egg. Something I would be very careful about doing, but from what i can see is the least invasive of options other than waiting or usign oxytocin. All this should certainly be referred to a vet and not taken from my advice, which i have not given.
I think epedemic sounds like a guy with vet knowledge so some more feedback from him would be great.
Would be great to remove the first egg and see if the other follows, trying to incubate it would be the most interesting thing.
Hope it all works out
Al

Hey Jeff,....WHER ARE YOU!?!?

The female eastern shed on Saturday and began actively attempting to lay. Sunday I squirted some more mineral oil in her vent to try to help out. This morning I found she had passed the large egg overnight! She looks much better, but there is another (smaller) egg to go.

I'm hoping she'll pass it soon and avoid surgery on Thursday. Here's a picture of the first egg.

http://gallery.kingsnake.com/data/78...14.JPG-med.jpg

Ive been worried about her! Sure hope she passes the next one o.k. too!!

This is very interesting. It looks to me like the egg does not have the typical sandpapery surface of a normal egg, and that may be the only thing that kept it from becoming adhered to the oviduct wall. Just for the heck of it, I would dissect the egg to see what's inside. Although it's almost definitely a slug.

Can you recall any environmental anomalies over the last 9 months which may have caused this phenomenon? Day or night length interuptions, electricity failures, light cycle getting messed up some how, etc.? I'd really like to understand how this happened. You said this girl is a virgin right?
T.

I weighed the "slug" and it was 92 grams! I started looking at it a little more closely and realized the egg was coated in a rubbery outer layer that peeled off to reveal..an egg. It is not "sandpapery", but it does have the texture of a dry egg...just rubberized.

The coating was very thick at one end and more skinlike elsewhere. The egg weighed 76 grams after the coating was removed.

Here's the egg cleaned up.

http://gallery.pethobbyist.com/data/...ed.JPG-med.jpg

Well, just for the heck of it,...put that egg someplace at about 73 degrees, and 75% humidity, and see what happens. Who knows. That is very odd though. Although I know that the human body will often times form a protective coating around a foreign object inside the body.
T.

If I incubate it anywhere it will be in the freezer. I think the eggs were treated as a foreign body as you suggest. Why they were encapsulated rather than absorbed I don't know.

I think I will attempt to aspirate the egg to determine if there is any liquid material that can be removed in case that becomes necessary with the remaining egg. But I suspect she will pass it as it is much smaller.

Here's a bad picture of the x-ray.

http://gallery.kingsnake.com/data/7821xray.JPG-med.jpg

I was easily able to aspirate the yolk/albumin from the egg which then collapsed.
So, I'm hopeful that the vet will be able to get the second egg out without surgery if she doesn't pass it on her own.