Help Please!

[Foschi Exotic Serpents]

Please do not attempt to remove stuck eye caps. Never use tweezers or tape. As I've said in the past, this is very dangerous and can cause blindness. A member here took her BP to a vet who used tweezers to try to remove what he thought was stuck caps. He ended up removing the cap under the outer cap and the snake went blind.

In reality, almost all bps will have a bad shed at some point. It's nearly impossible to keep 65-70% humidity at all times in some places.

If it is in fact stuck caps, they WILL come off on their own with the next shed if conditions are correct. Also, even if the old caps do come off, sometimes the new caps can still get dented or cloudy if humidity is too low.

The only truly safe way to get them off prior to the next shed is by putting the snake in a pillow case, end tied, then place the pillow case in an inch or so of warm water. Leave the snake in the wet pillow case about15 minutes.

What I do is raise ambient humidity and allow nature to fix itself.

Or, you can dab a tiny amount of A&D, bacitracin, or neosporin on each eye, every day, the moment you see the snake getting dull again and getting ready to shed. Do this until the shed and all will be fine.

Humid hides are very good as well. Take a plastic box the tight size for a tight hide, cut a hole in one end, and fill it with red cypress mulch bedding and some dry moss. Wet this to just barely damp and place it on the hot side in the enclosure during the week of a shed.

But please please do not mess with the eyes. We have been correcting this horrible mistake for a long time but there are still people who will do this. A retained shed or stuck eye cap is purely cosmetic. It does not need to be messed with beyond a warm soak and gentle body rub for shed. If it's caps, nothing more than your finger (no nails!) and a very gentle rub after an adequate soak, should ever be done. If they do not come off very easily then you risk damaging the needed cap underneath that one. I've seen it happen more than once and would not do that to my own animals.

The only time retained caps or shed becomes dangerous is if it is multiple layers retained after many sheds. Even then, no force or utensils are needed to fix it.