Does this pic show you anything?

Try letting your snake submerge nightly for a week in slightly warm water to see if the added humidity improves the situation. I always soak my snakes for the week run up to shedding to ensure clean, healthy sheds. It may a bit of dried shed that didn't clear. Soaking may resolve the issue.

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Originally Posted by BPBeth

Try letting your snake submerge nightly for a week in slightly warm water to see if the added humidity improves the situation.

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By "letting" her soak, do you mean providing her a source to where she can soak if she wants to or forcing her to soak? Her dish is large enough should she want to soak in it.

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Originally Posted by BPBeth

I always soak my snakes for the week run up to shedding to ensure clean, healthy sheds. It may a bit of dried shed that didn't clear. Soaking may resolve the issue.

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She soaked herself for several days before her shed. It was her first shed since we got her and considering the humidity problems I had before hand I was shocked that she had a perfect shed, minus the 1" or less left on the tip of her tail. She left it behind as she was coming out of her shed, even the head was intact and you could see where her eyes were. It was AWSOME!

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Originally Posted by BPBeth

It may a bit of dried shed that didn't clear. Soaking may resolve the issue.

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Like I said in my previous reply, her eyes do look better than what they look like in the pictures but not as good as some of the other pics I've seen. They really do look better in person than they do in the pics, too.

I'll see what happens after the next shed and I'll keep an eye on it till then, also.

Thanks again to everybody for their replies. I'll take all the help, comments and critiques I can get!! Bring it on! ;o)

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Originally Posted by BPBeth

Try letting your snake submerge nightly for a week in slightly warm water to see if the added humidity improves the situation. I always soak my snakes for the week run up to shedding to ensure clean, healthy sheds. It may a bit of dried shed that didn't clear. Soaking may resolve the issue.

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This is not something I can talk about from personal experience, but from what I've read I thought that soaking prior to shedding can make things worse?

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Originally Posted by kc261

This is not something I can talk about from personal experience, but from what I've read I thought that soaking prior to shedding can make things worse?

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You are correct - excessive soaking prior to a shed can actually draw out the natural oils that aid in shedding and make a shed worse. You only need to soak after a shed has gone poorly. This goes back to providing proper hydration and humidity during non-shed. If you do that, soaking is rarely needed to assist in a shed.

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Originally Posted by rabernet

You are correct - excessive soaking prior to a shed can actually draw out the natural oils that aid in shedding and make a shed worse. You only need to soak after a shed has gone poorly. This goes back to providing proper hydration and humidity during non-shed. If you do that, soaking is rarely needed to assist in a shed.

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So should I remove the large water dish prior to shed so she can't soak? For about a week before she shed, the temps and humidity were perfect, and she soaked most of that time. She shed in two pieces, an full body shed and about 1" of the tip of the tail.

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Originally Posted by TanyaL

So should I remove the large water dish prior to shed so she can't soak? For about a week before she shed, the temps and humidity were perfect, and she soaked most of that time. She shed in two pieces, an full body shed and about 1" of the tip of the tail.

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I'm referring to us choosing to soak them prior to a shed like another poster suggested.

None of mine soak before a shed. Next time you see her soaking, lift her out and see if you see what looks like pepper flakes in the bottom of her water dish. If you do, those are mites and likely the reason she's soaking. If you don't, then she just may be one of those that choses to soak.

Tanya, if you maintain proper and constant humidity levels there is no reason your snake will seek to soak. Neither is there a reason to forcibly soak a ball python kept properly. Soaking may be indicated if a shed goes wrong for some reason but as a normal course of events it's, as Robin stated, sometimes going to cause more problems than it addresses. The process of osmosis can draw more of the needed liquid layer from the snake prior to shed and this isn't a situation you want occurring.

I watch 23 ball pythons shed regularily, everything from 07 babies up to big adults. None are soaked prior to shed, none have huge water dishes that allow them to soak, they are simply kept with approprite humidity levels that allow them to do what nature built them to do.....shed complete and unassisted. Occasionally I'll have a patchy shed but that's not common and mostly does occur during the dryer winter months. That only means I need to tweak an enclosure slightly to adjust for a seasonal change. In those cases I'll soak the snake post-shed only if misting/increased humidity has not helped them do it themselves.

In my opinion, soaking any snake is a stressful event for the snake and best left as an option after a shed has gone wrong or in the cases of rescues coming in that are covered in stuck old sheds.