Quote Originally Posted by Family Jewels View Post
I could be wrong, but based on the snake's appearance in the video, it does not appear that your tank is humid enough. Under ideal habitat conditions, the snake's skin should never get that wrinkly, and generally (in my experience) only happens when the normal shedding event *did not take place when it was supposed to*. Basically, there should be a thin, lubricating layer of fluid secreted between the old skin and the new skin. If you ever catch a fresh shed immediately after it comes off, the inside feels a little bit moist or even oily to the touch and the skin itself can be manipulated and stretched without tearing.

I found a time-lapsed video of a ball python shedding from start to finish, and you can see that the skin, although dull, is not wrinkled in appearance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnJcnGnCZps

If the humidity is too low then the snake misses the "good shed" window, and the lubricating layer of fluid dries up, leaving the skin dry and stuck to the underlying layer of skin. It is this lack of lubrication (in the post-"good shed" period) in which the skin appears abnormally crinkly and wrinkled. This "bad shed" period often produces incomplete sheds and over time (if not corrected) comes with the risk of retained eye caps and tourniquet tails. One bad shed isn't going to hurt the snake, but the humidity problems need to be fixed before the next shed. I converted all of my glass tanks to PVC and Rubbermaid cages about eight years ago, and I have not had an incomplete shed since then. Glass tanks can be altered and manipulated and misted and monitored for proper humidity, but it is a sisyphean task that I gave up on long ago. Plastic has made my life (and my snake's lives) infinitely easier.

Mesh screen tops are perfectly designed to waste the two most important things in ball python husbandry: heat and humidity. Hot air rises, and with that hot air, so goes the humidity. You end up putting tons of heat and moisture into the cage and retaining very little, whereas in a plastic set-up, you put in very little heat and even less moisture, and it all gets retained very efficiently.... often to the point that you have to drill extra holes to reduce the humidity. My plastic cages look like mini-green houses.

Heat lamps dry out the air, so that's contributing to the humidity problem. Ball pythons ideally should have under tank heaters as their primary, or sole, heat source and only resort to heat lamps if they are absolutely unavoidable due to the size/design of the cage. You also appear to be using paper towels as substrate? The paper towels could be swapped out for cypress mulch. Cypress is great at holding onto moisture and it will give the snake an ideal medium to rub against when starting a new shed.
50-60% is the humidity. bumped it to 70% since i saw shedding signs. and no, i don't measure humidity with that gauge that's just a thermometer that measures the "cool" side of the enclosure. i use a digital one that measures humidity etc. but just last night he started shedding he was rubbing his face nonstop against the glass and sure enough i wake up the next morning and his skin isn't that wrinkly anymore, it looks like it's coming off in 2 pieces. the head part of the shed is off in the enclosure, and he has a huge shed going through the rest of his body right now. thanks for the advice though i appreciate it i worried that he was dehydrated but that doesn't seem to be the case there's always fresh water and i've been spraying his enclosure nonstop since he's shedding and the wrinkles have dissapeared. how long does it normally take for the shed to be completed? should i feed him? today's his feeding day.