Shedding Question

Good Sunday morning to you all. Squeezer never got in the hide box on the warm side...

He is now taking a soak. Doesn't seem to love it - very slithery. Enclosure too big to put in cage so he is by the door - semi sun - on floor 1/2 covered with dark towel. Don't ask why, just seemed like the right thing to do. Hoping he doesn't ATTACK me when I take him out! Although he is a very docile snake as far as I know....
Will see if he sloughs himself - going to clean out cage while he is out and make hide on both sides.
Will report later. Thanks for all the help.

Thanks for the update! Keep working at it and pretty soon everything will be peachy-keen.


I think we should coin a new saying: "You can lead a bp to humid hide, but you can't make him enter!" LOL

OMGosh - He will either love me or hate me. Brophy (the 7yr old owner) and I took Squeezer out of the soak, dampened the dark towel and went outside. It is about 85 today.... I commenced to getting him to slither through the towel and bits began coming off. Kinda like a kid (well we are kids) we were obliged to pick a little. The kid thought that was really cool. I could not get any of the skin off his head - and I wish I had taken a picture - it and his eyes looked HORRIBLE. So I forced him to push his head through my hand holding the damp towel. Ahhh a little progress, and 15 minutes later we had achieved a TOTAL shed. At least a couple layers on his head and upper body and then the new shed the rest of the body. Truly it was incrediblel and I have to think he will thank me. I did have to pull the skin (2 layers) off of his head, it just would not slough off. I didn't realize that the skin was over his eyes too. WOW a snake experience that we will never forget and I assume not the last!
Now, next question - how long should I wait to feed him? I know he has to be hungry but don't want to put him in total overload!
Thanks all - what a great site. Shawne

Well, hopefully you won't ever have to go to such heroic efforts to help with a shed. Maintaining 50%-60% daily should help temendously for the next one. In the right environment, a snake should be able to shed entirely on its own without any intervention on our part.


If I were in your shoes, I'd wait a few more days to feed him...let him get settled and "relaxed" again. I'm sure he's feeling MUCH better now, though, having gotten all that stuck skin off.

How are the eyes looking now?

His eyes look much better - like 200% better. He has not come out of his cool side hide at all yet the rest of the day. Got the new thermometer - Temp is 75 cool side - 85 wrm side and 64% humidity.

The air conditioner had to be turned on today - bet it was 90 out. That will keep me on my toes trying to regulate temp. But feel much more comfortable with digital read. Thanks!

Try and bump up the cold end to 82-84 and warm side to 92-94. Temps below 82 are undesirable for a bp. Also, see if you can invest in a container that can be fit inside the enclosure. It keeps the temps where your bp needs them to be and takes the guess work out of it.

Glad to hear the old stuck skin finally came off. Been there myself with layers upon layers of old shed and eyecaps and it's never fun. Sometimes you have to soak repeatedly to get it off.


You might want to consider an UTH (under tank heater). Glass tanks are a bit fiddly to get just right as far as heat and humidity but with help you'll get there I'm sure. You do need to bump the temps up a bit and especially with A/C in the house you're going to have even more issues that way. As well the heat lamp isn't going to keep up enough and it tends to dry the tank. So you get lower temps and low humidity....upping your chance for either an ill snake, a snake that can't or won't feed as it can't properly thermoregulate for digestion or a snake that just can't shed properly. Not to scare you at all, just being honest here.

There's lots of options for the UTH, in a variety of price ranges and you'll find your life so much more simple getting rid of the lamp or using it only as a supplimentary heat source. Please don't let the pet store tell you to buy a heat rock...they are bad and known to burn snakes and lizards explosed to them.

I'd definitely give the snake a few days to settle down before offering a feed. Maybe take those days to work on the heating/humidity issues. Even a good change in the tank environment stresses a snake so after any change you need to let the snake adjust for at least a few days or even better up to a week. It won't bother the snake to miss a weekly meal while you get stuff organized, in the wild they certainly don't snarf down a juicy rat or mouse every Thursday LOL.

Best of luck and please feel free to keep asking questions. Our caresheet is here as well as a great search function in Ball Python Husbandry so you can read lots of good common sense advice. Your certainly not the first or last person whose had to tweak a setup so don't feel odd about asking for help there.


~~Jo~~

Thanks Jo - I do have an under the tank heater and the infrared

I fear my challenge is the tall glass aquarium type tank. I think probably a shorter one would have served us better. But ... that is what we have and if at all possible I do want to work with it.
Wondering how to "fiddle" with the temp now - maby a larger uth? - and then perhaps I could do away with the infrared light? But, I thought the light was good for basking.... Different books, different sites, a dumb pet store, no local vet..... I'm glad I found you guys because here you get lots of different advice, but, pretty much all along the same lines - and you guys actually have bps!
So - I am going to wait another to try and feed but would appreciate any help with bringing the temp up in the tank.
Shawne

Try this link. Good information for setting up a tank.

Tank Setup

I keep my BP's in big sterlite/rubbermaid type bins so I'm not the one to give advice about glass environments but we do have a good number of folks here that are very successful and I'm sure they'll chime in with good advice for you. Glass is a challenge but not impossible to get sorted out.


Ball pythons do best with belly heat so the UTH is the way to go. The extra overhead lighting can be used to push up your warm side temp but the downside is it will dry out the enclosure and drop your humidity. Sort of exchanging one problem for another unfortunately.

Here's a wonderful resource a member of this forum (Krynos) recently wrote up as he and Cassandra have both their snakes in lovely glass viv's. Rick (Krynos) will be the first to admit he is very particular about his set-ups and spends a lot of time and money on them so this is the ultimate of glass viv setup. You may wish to adjust this slightly to your particular needs...but it's a very good resource to see what is possible. Cass also does the most beautiful looking yet snake safe glass enclosures.

http://www.onlinethingy.com/files/gr...ges/guide.html

Do a search in the forums (husbandry, caging, etc) using glass or glass viv or the like. You should find a ton of threads there with some stellar advice to start you off.

Not surprising at all that the pet store isn't much help, after all most of them still sell tons of those darned heat rocks. Also not always easy to find a herp vet but again there are resources we can likely help you with that way too as we've all had to do the vet search at some point or other lol. If you want a wonderful brand new book on ball pythons that very well respected try this one....

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/book.html

It's worth every cent so I've been told (and yes I'm hinting about getting it for Mother's Day this year LOL).


~~Jo~~