Chronically Poor Shed

[ScottS]

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I'm just curious if anybody else has experienced a snake that never has a good shed. My 2016 coral glow girl, about 2000 gms, just had another one of her messy sheds and I have spent the last hour with wet towels etc cleaning her up.

It doesn't seem to be a humidity problem. She is in a 6 tray rack with two snakes above her and two snakes below in identical conditions that all shed perfectly every time. This time I've upped her humidity continually since her last shed by putting two water bowls in there along with a baseball sized ball of sphagnum wrapped in mesh.

She just doesn't seem to be able to pull it off!

[Bogertophis]

No pun intended, eh? Ever had her stool checked for parasites? If she's internally sharing her nutrition, that could also cause bad sheds.

[ScottS]

Good point, I'll check that out; though it might be a while, there was a stool with the shed this morning.

[Bogertophis]

Good point, I'll check that out; though it might be a while, there was a stool with the shed this morning.

So fish it out of the trash & run a sample to the vet asap- needs to be fresh, this might be the closest catch you get for a while?

[Sonny1318]

Possible mites? But definitely get it’s poop checked!

[paulh]

Lots of good advice in this thread.

I used to have a baby corn snake that had a poor shed every couple of weeks, which was too often. The problem cleared up with vitamin supplementation. It grew up and was sold off when it became excess to my needs.

I used a cage bird vitamin named Avitron, but any liquid multivitamin for adding to cage bird water should be acceptable. I opened the belly of a dead rodent, put one drop of the vitamins in the belly, and fed the rodent to the snake.Timing--once per month for 3-4 months.

Getting a vitamin with calcium is wasteful. Rodent eaters get plenty of calcium in the bones. At best extra calcium passes through the gut and leaves in the droppings. At worst, it gets deposited in the body causing gout.

Good luck.

[ScottS]

So fish it out of the trash & run a sample to the vet asap- needs to be fresh, this might be the closest catch you get for a while?

[ScottS]

Not possible to fish it out of the trash. I heat with a wood burning stove and it all goes in there.

[Toad37]

Not possible to fish it out of the trash. I heat with a wood burning stove and it all goes in there.

U heat ur house with trash and snake poop? I'm confused.

[Danger noodles]

Possible mites? But definitely get it’s poop checked!

I don’t see how mites could contribute to bad shedding

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Not possible to fish it out of the trash. I heat with a wood burning stove and it all goes in there.

What?????