Bad shed - weird stuck eye cap
He had mostly a good shed, it came off in almost one piece, until the area around his neck, there is still some stuck shed, his eye has some on both the eye, and around it. I've never stuck shed go around the eye before. I've put sphagnum moss in his hide to help him out. I keep it at 77 on the cool side, 83 on the warm side, humidity typically sits at 55%, which I know is low, I use sphagnum moss to help. Is the shed around the eye a concern, or should it come off normally with the rest of the shed? https://imgur.com/a/Yvw01nL
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https://imgur.com/a/Yvw01nL
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https://imgur.com/a/Yvw01nL
Re: Bad shed - weird stuck eye cap
I'm not an advocate for thermal gradients with ball pythons, I consider most enclosures far too small to use this method effectively. My enclosures only have an ambient temperature and a belly heat temperature (via under-tank heating element).
I really have no shedding issues with my collection, however, occasionally there is one with shed stuck around their face/neck. Normally I just take a large water bowl-big enough to soak the entire snake but shallow enough that the snake can rest on the bottom, and then I put the snake in and add a perforated cover (for ventilation). I weigh down the cover with something heavy so the snake cannot escape and I stand there and wait (only for a few minutes). The hardest part is making sure the water temperature is correct, and I do this by letting the water temperature stabilize to the ambient temperature of the enclosure (80-85F). I've found they only need a few minutes of a soak. Interesting thing about stuck sheds is how the water wicks under the shedding scales...the entire snake does not need to be submerged-just a portion of the trapped shed. If you have a particularly stubborn shed you can take the snake out of the soak and then wrap it in a bath towel and then gently squeeze it and make the snake wriggle out of the towel you are holding it in. I've only had to use the towel method a few times in decades of ball python husbandry. Sometimes there is stuck shed across the snakes body: I am only concerned with the head and neck-as the rest should come off in the next shed. This is just the method I use, I don't deal with rescues or extreme cases.
Note: If you are using town water then you probably want to add a chemical dechlorinator to your water that will cancel out any chloramines that might bother your snakes eyes. :)
