Shedding: how can you be sure it's all gone?

[Renenet]

Another shed for my stimmie. She's a bit early this time - six weeks as opposed to seven - but still favours Tuesdays for her sloughs.

This shed's question is: how can you be dead sure it's a complete shed when the old skin is messed up? She scrunched it up quite badly in her wriggling. It seemed intact aside from the fact that the skin on her head broke off from the main piece, and that was where I checked first. All good there.

However, I'm not convinced the same is true of her body. On close inspection there seemed to be a few scattered bits of retained shed. I soaked her in a warm bath as best as I could, considering she hates water and spends most of her time trying to get out.

I definitely got some of it off, but I'm not convinced I got it all. Is there anything I should be looking for? Is there anything else I do other than give her another soak tomorrow?

Thanks,
Renenet

 

[JAS101]

i allways check to see if the tail peice is there in the shed and the eye scales and thats it .. as long as the parts are there then i dont do anything else . the next shed i find gets any remaining off .

 

[Renenet]

Thanks JAS101. Eye caps and tail are both fine. If there's no real risk to leaving retained shed on the rest of her I'll stop panicking.

I weighed her after she had her usual post-shed poop. She's 72 grams. No wonder she shed early. She's gained 24 grams since last slough.

 

[Fantazmic]

Hi ya

something i always look for apart from eye scales and tip of the tail is I make sure there is no skin encircling the body because as the snake grows before the next shed it can cause a constriction. If there are just small isolated patches of skin on the body this isnt too much of a concern, just so long as they arent joined up around the body to form a band if that makes sense.

Regards

Elizabeth

 

[Renenet]

Definitely no band. Thanks Elizabeth, I'm feeling better now.

 

[benjaffa]

put your snake in a heshem, bag old sack for a couple of hours the corse sack should remove any retained shed as the snake moves around in the sack.