My boa shed in pieces, What do I do?

[ClayEnglish]

My boa attempting to shed its skin, but it is only coming off in pieces. What can I do to help finish the Shed and what should I do to prevent it from happening again?

Instant Solution
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Your boa should shed in 1 continuous piece of skin! However, if it doesn't it is a problem that results from the lack of HUMIDITY in the enclosure. Humidity should be 50 to 60 % at all times. To avoid this problem in the future, you need to mist the snakes with a handheld spray bottle. Fill the spray bottle with HOT water, and by the time you spray the mist will only be lukewarm to the snake. Try this on your hand first. I mist any boas in the pre-shed cycle every day. Spray them down good, and they will generally shed perfectly, every time.

Now for the snake that has remaining skin after a shed. The quickest thing to do is to soak the boa in a tub of lukewarm water for about an hour. This will generally loosen any remaining skin, which you should be able to gently rub off. There are also products available, like Shed-Aide or Shed-Ease that can be purchased at your local pet store, and you just add this to the water to help with problem shedding.

It is also very important that you make sure the eyecaps are included in the shed skin. Eyecaps are the clear scales that cover the eyes. These eyecaps should come off with the shed skin every time the snake sheds. It is important to check every shed skin, even if you have to "unroll" it to visually check the eyecaps. Failure to shed the eyecaps can cause infections around the eyes. You can use a piece of masking/scotch tape and turn it inside-out, and gently roll it across the eye area. Most of the time this will safely "lift" the retained eyecap off.


A couple quick additional points:

1. Sometimes it will be impossible to remove part of a stuck shed. Do not agonized if this happens. Normally your Boa will go about his normal life after this and should still eat like usual. However the animal will almost always go into an additional shed pretty quickly. With this shed you need to be sure you follow Clay's suggestion to the letter keeping the Boa humid especially after the eyes clear up and shedding is eminent. The high humidity will just about guarantee a complete perfect shed.

2. Be careful to watch that your animals shed the skin and the very last tip of the tail. Once one shed has been slightly incomplete on the tail it is much more likely this tip will not shed again. If this happens the portion of tail beneath this unshed tail tip will die. This can cause a wicked infection so keep an eye on those tail tips!

Orange text by - Jeff Ronne / The Boaphile