MakersMarked
On the outside looking in
I entered a raffle at my go-to LPS last week, hoping to win a gift card or a new cage. Instead, I won a female mojave ball python (which wasn't one of the prizes when I entered--they just added more prizes later to get more people to buy tickets).
So I set up a viv and decided to give her a week of acclimation time, as I'd do with a new corn. About 4-5 days into that week, I noticed bits of shed, so I looked in her hide (which she'd been in for the whole time--ah, ball pythons!), and noticed she'd shed from her head and about 1/4 of her body. The rest hadn't come off (eyecaps are off, though, so thank gawd for that). Since then, I've been misting the tank every morning and evening, swapped out her regular warm hide for one of those more enclosed repti-shelters filled with moist sphagnum moss (which smells! I had no idea!), added a branch with more rough edges to snag the skin, and gave her a bigger water dish that she can completely curl up in.
It's been 3 days, and so far there's been no real progress. A few small pieces of shed have flaked off, but 3/4 of her body is still basically wearing old skin. I haven't seen her go in the water dish, and I she won't go back into the moist hide (maybe the smell bothers her, too?).
When should I get worried? Should I soak her in warm water? For how long/how deep/how warm?
Neither of my cornsnakes has ever had a bad shed, so I'm not really familiar with the troubleshooting here.
I knew I should've just turned down the prize. But from what I've seen, female mojaves can go for $200+, so I didn't want to pass this up.
So I set up a viv and decided to give her a week of acclimation time, as I'd do with a new corn. About 4-5 days into that week, I noticed bits of shed, so I looked in her hide (which she'd been in for the whole time--ah, ball pythons!), and noticed she'd shed from her head and about 1/4 of her body. The rest hadn't come off (eyecaps are off, though, so thank gawd for that). Since then, I've been misting the tank every morning and evening, swapped out her regular warm hide for one of those more enclosed repti-shelters filled with moist sphagnum moss (which smells! I had no idea!), added a branch with more rough edges to snag the skin, and gave her a bigger water dish that she can completely curl up in.
It's been 3 days, and so far there's been no real progress. A few small pieces of shed have flaked off, but 3/4 of her body is still basically wearing old skin. I haven't seen her go in the water dish, and I she won't go back into the moist hide (maybe the smell bothers her, too?).
When should I get worried? Should I soak her in warm water? For how long/how deep/how warm?
Neither of my cornsnakes has ever had a bad shed, so I'm not really familiar with the troubleshooting here.
I knew I should've just turned down the prize. But from what I've seen, female mojaves can go for $200+, so I didn't want to pass this up.