Shedding Question

[Hugsplox]

"To feed or not to feed, that is the question [when in shed]" and it gets asked here a lot. I've repeated my advice a lot too. Thing is, only a handful of members here have kept as many snakes as I have (100's, I stopped counting long ago), or for as many years (3.5 decades) as I have...so you can ask people with a few snakes that never had a problem & think it's fine. Me personally, I've seen this issue often enough to know I'd rather avoid it, especially since most captive snakes are a bit over-fed, and in the wild, they'd NEVER eat in shed because prey animals rarely volunteer to get eaten by a cranky snake that's minding it's own business. Most snakes refuse to eat while they're in shed anyway, so IMO we should take their word for it. Those with any underlying health issues or husbandry issues (ie. humidity too low) are the most likely to "get stuck" but sometimes you just never know until it happens.

Right. This is why I started leaving other sites alone in favor of getting advice here from people like you. Lesson learned, I was able to let him sit in a lukewarm wet towel for about 20 minutes, got a good bit of it off, then soaked again, took almost the rest off. He has some smaller pieces but I felt like I had stressed the poor guy out enough over something that was my fault. I'll check him again tomorrow and see if he was able to rub those last little belly pieces off before I put him through the stress of the towel again. The tail tip was what I was worried about but he was able to get that himself. The worst part was trying to get him going just behind the head, his neck area, it's so thin I was worred I'd hurt him if I squeezed too tight, but a few puffs from him and some choice words from me later lol and I think we're okay.