I’ve got a vet visit tomorrow - overall wellness check - but I did discover two eggs in Bella’s hide yesterday. We just adopted her last Wednesday, and she had eaten that Monday. Is it too soon to be feeding her? This is the first herp I’ve had that has laid eggs. Most of mine are not at sexual maturity yet; at least not the females. She’s almost six years old, roughly 1500g.
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I’d say it would be fine as long as they will eat, because when they lay (I’m supposing you removed the eggs and there now in the incubator) and their protecting them they won’t eat. But if you pull the eggs, then you need to do a deep clean on their cage to remove the smell of eggs. Then you need to give them about a day to forget that they laid eggs, and then they will hopefully eat.
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So she hasn’t been around any other snakes, so I didn’t incubate them. They weren’t fertile. She’s just a pet, not a breeder. I should have clarified that, sorry!
But yeah, I’m sure she might eat, but since she ate a week ago, that just felt too soon. However, I know laying eggs takes a lot out of a snake, so I’m trying to be sensitive to that as well.
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Yeah I understand
you should be fine if you wait about a day before feeding, and yes you should try your best to get her back on food as soon as possible do start building back to a healthy weight.
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And here I was, thinking I still had another two weeks or so before I needed to feed her!
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Regarding cleaning, is it worth tossing out all of the substrate, or would I be safe to wash her, remove the substrate where she laid, and clean the hide? We’re moving her into a new enclosure this week, so I wasn’t planning on having to do a deep clean like this.
EDIT: She’s currently in a 36x18x12, going into a 4x2x2. Big upgrade. Will have to wait until she’s digested before we move her, though.
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I’d say that’s ok, especially because you are going to be moving her soon and so that will do basically the same thing as deep cleaning as far as removing all smell of eggs.
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Just some additional info.
If you got her as a rescue, it’s very possible she retained sperm from being in an enclosure with a male, or it’s also possible that she had a partho clutch, essentially meaning she replicated with herself. Ball pythons aren’t usually a species that just lay infertile eggs when they hit maturity, like some geckos and what not.
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@nswilkerson1 So I did “rescue” her, but not in the traditional sense. Same family for 5.75 years. They just couldn’t give her the attention she needed, so they put her up for adoption. Definitely not your typical “we need to get rid of our BP” situation.
That said, they definitely were slugs. I’ve seen what normal looking eggs should be, and these were small and very…eh…gangly? Not sure if that’s the best way to describe it. Definitely wasn’t anything going on in there, (un)fortunately.
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