Miracle Hogs from snake with no oviduct

[Stockwell]

Hi Gang... Been waiting for these hog eggs to hatch before posting the story.
Last year I had a young hognose get completely eggbound.
After several days she finally managed to push a couple huge eggs out however the eggs came out complete with the oviduct and it was quite a mess.
I pushed the remainding eggs out then cut the oviduct off with scissors. I have had some experience with this in the past and while snakes generally survive they are thought to be useless as breeders and are given away as "pets only" never to be rebred.

As an educational experiment and out of pure curiousity I thought that I had little to lose to keep the snake and actually try to rebreed it again.
I fully expected either she wouldn't breed, wouldn't produce or at worse she would get completely eggbound and die.
Well, Imagine my shock when she laid 6 perfect eggs.
Snakes have 2 oviducts so presumably she laid these out the undamaged side.
However she she still has some ova stuck in her and I suspect they are in the oviduct that was cut off and no longer exists.
She is eating and doing fine however, so the experiment is ongoing.
But either way, below are 6 healthy baby hogs from a prolapsed female that had an oviduct cut off

above the clutch and below mom in the process of laying the clutch


a close up of a hatching hognose...I have switched to the substrate- less system for all my eggs this year complete with NO air holes in the egg trays...So far I am getting 100% hatch rates.
Keeping the eggs up out of the substrate keeps the ones on the bottom from getting water logged and not making it. It's common to lose some eggs if they are laid in a clump and are resting right in the substrate. Having the egg crate barrier means you don't need to worry about adding too much water, because they are elevated above the vermiculite in a 100% RH environment.
Water could be used with no vermiculite , but it sloshes around when you remove the trays and there is always a fear that hatclings could drown, so thats the only real purpose the vermiculite serves as well as holding up the egg crate