After giving the matter much thought and a lot of research, last night my wife (who is a nurse) and I decided it was time to do something for our egg bound Cal King. We resigned to the fact that she was not going to be able to lay these eggs on her own. After almost two weeks with no progress and since she was becoming less active and more weak over the last couple days, we needed to act soon. I would NOT recommend that anyone try this without the help of someone who has experience with the subject. This post is not intended to be a "How To". If anyone decides to copy our methods, it is at their own risk. That being said, here is what we did...
We bought some 18ga needles, 10cc syringes and alcohol wipes and set up to perform our "operation". We put the snake inside a dark pillow case with just her tail end out. Then we looked over her large lump of retained eggs trying to figure out how many eggs there might be, which order/orientation they might be in and where we should first drain from. I restrained her and held her steady while my wife, who has had plenty of needle giving experience and training, poked through the snakes side. It is written that about half way up the snake's side and in between scales is the point where you should penetrate so that is what we did. We drew out just over 6cc's of milky yellow fluid from the egg closest to her cloaca. Then we tried to move the egg further back and through her vent. It didn't work. We tried to drain a couple more times and drew out over 3cc's form another egg. Once we had done that, the bulge had gotten a lot smaller.
We gave her a few minutes to rest before going any further. When I took her out of the bag to start again, she was relaxed enough for us to be able to open her cloaca and see the off white shell of her first egg. Using a mid sized probe, my wife held her cloaca open while I pushed the mostly empty egg out of her. Over the next few minutes we pushed out two more eggs. Here is a picture of what we ended up with...
This morning, Adrian had pushed out a nice smelly stool and a rather large one too! There is no longer a sign of any eggs in her but between what she laid on her own and what we helped her get out, that's only 5 eggs which is kind of a low count for a Cal King. Anyway, I will be keeping close tabs on her for the next couple weeks and let you all know how she is progressing. Thanks a lot to everyone who offered their advice!
Egg bound Cal King: UPDATE
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