Female Stimson laying egg with no male?

[Maddison]

I adopted a female stimmy about 18 months ago and was told she was around 10-12 years old. She has always been on her own in her enclosure. It appears she has laid an egg - is this common? She has not taken to food over winter although I have always maintained her temp at around 34 degrees and tried to feed her every 2-3 weeks. She has not eaten since March but has shed twice, most recently 3 weeks ago. Aside from the random egg laying I'm at a loss as to what to do about her not eating! I’ve more recently been trying to feed her smaller rats but she doesn’t seem interested. She is still very docile when handled.

 

[Herpetology]

Looks fertile but double check, it could have been retained sperm

 

[Sdaji]

It's normal for pythons to stop feeding while gravid (pregnant). It's not normal for them to lay one egg and not all of them at the same time. If she hasn't laid them all she'll have more inside her, and usually when they lay one or a few but not all, there is a problem such as egg binding or there is something wrong with the eggs, but sometimes this does happen when all the eggs are healthy.

Do not offer any feed until the eggs are out. Most importantly, do not disturb the snake. Many people scream 'go to the vet now!' as soon as anything is not 100% normal, and in cases where the snake needs to be left undisturbed, being bagged up and taken for a car ride and then examined in an unfamiliar environment etc is the absolute last thing you want and often causes problems. A vet will almost always suggest surgical removal of the eggs in these cases, which will potentially result in the snake dying if it doesn't go well (they'll tell you the snake would have died anyway which is generally not true) and it will leave the snake unbreedable in future (if they have eggs in the future after such surgery they will either need surgery again or they'll die). Usually they'll first give an oxytocin injection to try to induce oviposition and this will almost never work.

With any luck you'll find she has already finished laying the rest of the clutch. Fingers crossed for you. No disturbance (handling etc) until the eggs are out.

 

[Maddison]

It's normal for pythons to stop feeding while gravid (pregnant). It's not normal for them to lay one egg and not all of them at the same time. If she hasn't laid them all she'll have more inside her, and usually when they lay one or a few but not all, there is a problem such as egg binding or there is something wrong with the eggs, but sometimes this does happen when all the eggs are healthy.

Do not offer any feed until the eggs are out. Most importantly, do not disturb the snake. Many people scream 'go to the vet now!' as soon as anything is not 100% normal, and in cases where the snake needs to be left undisturbed, being bagged up and taken for a car ride and then examined in an unfamiliar environment etc is the absolute last thing you want and often causes problems. A vet will almost always suggest surgical removal of the eggs in these cases, which will potentially result in the snake dying if it doesn't go well (they'll tell you the snake would have died anyway which is generally not true) and it will leave the snake unbreedable in future (if they have eggs in the future after such surgery they will either need surgery again or they'll die). Usually they'll first give an oxytocin injection to try to induce oviposition and this will almost never work.

With any luck you'll find she has already finished laying the rest of the clutch. Fingers crossed for you. No disturbance (handling etc) until the eggs are out.

Thank you so much for your reply. I had a look at the egg this morning but it looked to be going rotten (yellowish and transparent in colour). She has now tucked the egg back under herself and remains under her hide. I’m not sure how many eggs she has laid as I have only had a glimpse at one.

I know I will need to remove the egg(s) and sterilise her enclosure but I am wary of her being aggressive and protective of the clutch. Is there a way you would suggest doing this to keep her as calm as possible?

 

[Sdaji]

I'd just remove the snake from the eggs and put the eggs in the incubator. If you're not confident in handling snakes (it doesn't take a lot of skill, I taught myself when I was a teenager with no one helping me, most of us back then were self-taught including handling deadly snakes, and with a Stimson's there's no risk to you, you just need to do it) it's odd that you're choosing to keep one. If you prefer you can go for maternal incubation. Either way you'll need to act quickly to learn how to do it and get everything set up without delay if you want to get these eggs to hatch, or you might just want to wing it and see what happens; you might get lucky with maternal incubation if the enclosure is set up well enough for it.

I'm not sure why you would need to sterilise the enclosure and find this statement puzzling. Eggs are not dangerously contagious.

If you're going to go for maternal incubation you don't need to know how many she has, but it's a good idea to check that she does have a clutch of eggs in her coils and didn't just lay one. If you post a picture of her I should be able to tell if she has a clutch even if no eggs are visible (the posture they make when they're surrounding a clutch is pretty distinctive).

 

[Maddison]

I'd just remove the snake from the eggs and put the eggs in the incubator. If you're not confident in handling snakes (it doesn't take a lot of skill, I taught myself when I was a teenager with no one helping me, most of us back then were self-taught including handling deadly snakes, and with a Stimson's there's no risk to you, you just need to do it) it's odd that you're choosing to keep one. If you prefer you can go for maternal incubation. Either way you'll need to act quickly to learn how to do it and get everything set up without delay if you want to get these eggs to hatch, or you might just want to wing it and see what happens; you might get lucky with maternal incubation if the enclosure is set up well enough for it.

I'm not sure why you would need to sterilise the enclosure and find this statement puzzling. Eggs are not dangerously contagious.

If you're going to go for maternal incubation you don't need to know how many she has, but it's a good idea to check that she does have a clutch of eggs in her coils and didn't just lay one. If you post a picture of her I should be able to tell if she has a clutch even if no eggs are visible (the posture they make when they're surrounding a clutch is pretty distinctive).

Thanks again for the advice.

Just wanted to reiterate that there is almost no chance these eggs will hatch as she has been in a solo enclosure with no male present for at least 5 years. I don’t know her history prior to that. As stated, the egg that I could see yesterday appeared to be going rotten as it was yellow/green in colour and slightly transparent.

I could find very limited info on the net for this and the little info I did find suggested that if the eggs weren’t fertilised then they would begin to rot - the comment about sterilising the enclosure was due to the fact that the rotting eggs could pose a threat if there was bad bacteria or the likes.

I’m very confident handling her, just cautious given the circumstances that I was in no way prepared for as this does seem to be quite uncommon.

 

[Herpetology]

A ball python in a zoo laid eggs 40 years after last being with a male (not partho) from retained sperm

 

[Sdaji]

Thanks again for the advice.

Just wanted to reiterate that there is almost no chance these eggs will hatch as she has been in a solo enclosure with no male present for at least 5 years. I don’t know her history prior to that. As stated, the egg that I could see yesterday appeared to be going rotten as it was yellow/green in colour and slightly transparent.

I could find very limited info on the net for this and the little info I did find suggested that if the eggs weren’t fertilised then they would begin to rot - the comment about sterilising the enclosure was due to the fact that the rotting eggs could pose a threat if there was bad bacteria or the likes.

I’m very confident handling her, just cautious given the circumstances that I was in no way prepared for as this does seem to be quite uncommon.

There are cases of snakes retaining sperm for over five years, and there are even cases of pythons of several species reproducing parthenogenetically (it is actually possible for pythons which have never been exposed to a male at all to produce eggs which hatch - it's not common but it does happen).

If the eggs are not viable, yes, they'll go bad, but in that situation the snake will abandon them. I'm guessing 'sterilising the enclosure' is just an exaggerated way of saying 'keep it clean'. Sure, you should keep the enclosure clean. There's a difference between clean and sterile, and sterility isn't something we need to be worrying about in a situation like this, and there's not any sort of urgency about cleanliness beyond what you'd normally be thinking about.

A snake laying eggs isn't an uncommon event, or a particularly difficult thing to deal with in a handling context, especially with something like a Stimson's Python. It's not hugely unusual for a Stimson's Python to produce eggs despite not being with a male that season, and assuming she has been with a male before, it's fairly likely the eggs are viable (and even possible if she's never seen a male).