shedding

When I went to bed last (Saturday) night Monty was rolling around in a most unusual way, rubbing his head on himself, the newspaper and his hide so I figured something was up. I had the humidity up to around 70%.

When I woke up he was curled up in a tight ball looking much lighter in colour than normal with a shed ball under his hide.

The ball is complete form teh tip of the tail to the angle of the underside of his jaw - my only slight concern is the top his head. His eyes looks clear but there are a few flakes of loose skin around the back of his head. I don't know if this is unusual?

Anyway, here he is post shed:

http://www.apso12.dsl.pipex.com/misc/postshed.jpg

And here is the shed ball:

http://www.apso12.dsl.pipex.com/misc/shedball.jpg

I fell like a proud parent with their baby's first haircut!

I will try to feed him again tonight or tomorrow - not too suprising he didn't want to eat on Friday I guess :)

You can wait until the next feeding time to give him his meal, if you want. Don't worry about it. Again if you want to feed that fine too, but sometimes it's better just to wait. Congrats on the shed. I have a lot of my sheds still, but haven't framed them or anything like that yet. It does look like you may have a little retained shed there on the head. You can try a wet cloth and gently wiping, if it doesn't come off in another day or so. :D :clap:

One of ours refuses to eat during shed, the other one eats when eyes are blue, when shed is half off, she don't care just bring on the mice!

Glad to hear your first shed went so well other than a few scales retained which will probably come off with that warm, wet face cloth thing.

We have one due to shed any day now.


~~Jo~~

Well being impatient I just tried to feed him again, less than ten seconds after sliding open the doors and dangling the rat (hairless pink things I guess they are weanlings?) BANG. He's swallowing it as I type. I need some longer forceps as I can certainly see the potential for a miss hit.
So no worries to his appetite :)
Ill try to rub his head when I handle him for the first time (properly) in a few days, but I'm hopeful he'll have just rubbed it off by then.

I almost wonder if he would take another rat at the moment - he has swallowed it and he definitely looks like he is searching for something.
I always assumed that after a large meal he would just want to find a warm spot to sleep it off in but after eating actually seems to be one of his most active times.

Today I handled him properly for the first time.
Had him out for about 5-10 minutes or so whilst we cleaned up his viv.
He clearly didn't enjoy it but he didn't respond as I thought he would by curling into a ball but was very active (looking to escape I know, another stress response), he flinches with sudden movements and gave a hiss or two as well.
I was pretty nervous (about him somehow escaping, getting very stressed or turning out to be a biter) but I'm pretty happy with how things went.
I learnt a few valuable lessons: not to be nervous about getting bit and that pythons are faster than they look.

Time to leave him alone for a week or so now, he is clearly a stressed out snake, cruising around his tank looking for a an exit like he did when we first got him. I think the fact he has spent most of the last week or two mostly hiding with very short periods of movement is probably the sign of a happy snake.

How fast do they grow? I would bet money on the fact his is both a bit longer and a bit fatter since I got him just over 3 weeks ago.