Egg bound or egg retention!

[MarcB]

I had a customer e-mail me requesting info on egg binding or egg retention symptoms and he didn't know how to differentiate the two very distinct problems and I was thinking it would be best to post this here and open discussion to get different opinions...this is for you J.A....

Althought both symptoms appear the same and are thought to be synonymous, there is a big difference;

Egg bound

A condition were the female is unable to lay her clutch of eggs or very few eggs, the eggs are stuck in the oviduct and can no longer be pushed by muscular contraction when in a weakened state, often leading to dehydration, becomes limp with no muscle tone. This condition must be recognized early has complications can lead to death. At this point, it is advisable to get to your Vet a.s.a.p.

Egg retention

A condition were the female retains a few eggs (usualy slugs) that are not laid along the good fertalized eggs. Althought, this condition is not usualy as critical as egg binding, can also lead to complications. I often hear people going to see their Vet after only a short few weeks of egg retention only to find out later that their precious female had been butchered by removing parts of both oviducts and consequently sterilizing the female. This condition is often related to young undersized females. Proper diagnostic is needed to evaluate the next step. I don't pretend to be a Vet but I've always cautioned to be very patient with a few retained eggs. If they were not meant to come out along with the clutch of good eggs, they will eventualy come out down the road from a few weeks up to a year later...

The above are only my own observations, open for discussion and debate. As I've mentioned, when in doubt, please consult trained medical advise.

I'm sure I've left out some valuable information, Roy, Jeff, Mark, Brian, Mary and everyone else with such experience, please jump in and share your wisdom....

[nicola_boulton]

Very interesting, well how small do you think that a 'too small' female is, so that she would get egg bound?
how big do you think a female should be before she lays eggs?
Thanks alot

[MarcB]

Optimal size would depend on the sub species? Which kind are you referring to?

[nicola_boulton]

oh sorry! im so stupid sometimes, i mean corn snakes

[MarcB]

I would have to say the minimum breeding size for a female corn to be 36" to 42" and in the 300-350 gr. range to be safe. I know people breed their corns at 24'' or so and that would be asking for trouble.

I am sure our residant corn expert Mr. Fung will reply, althought I think he breeds his females at 12" .....(joke of course),,LOL..

[nicola_boulton]

lol, kk thanks for that. Have to convert it into centermeters thought.

[Will]

Good point about them being two very different problems. I went through having my Cal Female retain eggs and several people here were of great help during that process. When that happened, I thought retention/binding were one and the same and naturally was very concerned.

Question is, at what point does the egg(s) stop being retained and start being bound...?

You don't want to go to the vet for a female retaining a few eggs, trust me it's a waste of time/money, I know that now. However, with a bound up female, you want to go ASAP, right...? When/how do you decide you need to go to the vet...?

[vanderkm]

Excellent to clarify distinction between these two syndromes but as Will says - often hard to know where egg retention is becoming a real problem.

We have only two experiences with, what according to this definition, would be egg retention. Both in females (one corn, one cal king) that had never been bred, but had been in the same room as males (Roy and Katt have suggested shared airspace and pheromones may be responsible).

In the first case, a young corn, where we followed the 'wait and see' advice, she deteriorated and after she passed only a small number of slugs over a week, then stopped, and she was still full of slugs on post mortem. She had several 'piled up' at the vent but only a slight bulge visible externally and they were all sticky slug type eggs. So she sort of ended up egg-bound even though she didn't have any fertile eggs.

Our second was a huge cal king that continued passing slugs every day to other day for over a month. In her case they seemed to move down on a regular basis. We based a decision to wait with her based on the fact that she left her nest box, resumed feeding and things seemed to be moving. She recovered fully.

On a side note - we attempted to breed the cal king this year because we were paranoid about having another female pass a clutch of infertile eggs - thought we were just lucky that she lived the previous year and didn't want to lose her. This year she passed a bunch of slugs early post shed and we thought the breeding had failed. She then suprised us with a clutch of 13 eggs that appeared normal (white shelled, most clumped together) a week later. I put them in for incubation, but many candled clear and infertile, though some look good.

Whole breeding situation really shows me how much I don't know and still need to sort out - and hard to do it sometimes without jeopardizing the animal's health,

mary v.

[MarcB]

I don't think its an easy call to differenciate one condition over the other. It realy boils down to how the female looks and reacts.

When in doubt, its best to go right away to the Vet. I don't worry for a few retained eggs, they are always expelled at some point.

This is when record keeping comes in handy as most females will lay their clutch within the same timeframe as previous years and this can be an indication of something not right.

[Classic]

This is another good one Marc. This is new info for me. I hadn't thought to differentiate the two.

Brian
hwh