I'm a fairly new Ball Python owner, and completely new to the reptile world. I've had my male ball for about 3-4 months now, from a small juvenile, and he's still pretty small. He's been an awesome little pet, extremely docile, seems to enjoy being handled, and always great about eating. However lately he's not been shedding completely, leaving behind large patches of dry skin.

I keep him in a 10 gallon glass terrarium with aspen bedding substrate. He's got a UTH pad below his hide on the warm side, and another hide on the cool side and he uses both hides frequently. Temp is around 78 on the cool side up to 88 in his warm side hide. I don't use a tank light. I've kept the humidity at about 50%, until I first noticed the bad shedding.

I've made a few adjustments over the past month or so to try to help. I've covered 3/4 of the screen top with a large towel to reduce airflow and I mist down the tank daily with a spray bottle to try to boost the humidity. Currently it's about 60%, but he's still having trouble with his last shedding. I've given him a few soakings afterwards which seems to help tremendously but I still wonder what I'm doing wrong. Does feeding effect shedding habits? Reading around I notice some people feed their snakes quite frequently, while I'm feeding him a live hopper mouse about every 10 days.