Reptile & Amphibian Forums

durga shed last night, and he retained his eyecaps...... whats the best method to remove them?

The first question: are you sure they were retained? Is this the only part of the shed that remained? Did the rest of the shed come off like a normally healthy shed would?

As for getting the retained eye caps off, I would consider two options:

1) Sweat box
2) Leave them until the next shed
-----
Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

I agree we use a swet box for any shedding issues...soaking just wasn't really working and I can't explain why. So we take a 32 qt sterlit or rubbermaid bin, put a large beach towel in it spray it heavily with almost a bottle of warm water drop in snake close and sit it on a drug store heating pad for 2 hours. The towel holds moisture but more importantly the terry gives a rougher surface to get the shed rubbed off but gentle enough no eye damage, etc. The snakes just seem to love to burrow into teh towel and when you take them out two hours later the shed is burried down in the folds of the towel and teh snake is clean and happy.

IN extreme cases where this failed (rare) and the next shed didn't get the caps off we did worrry/do worry so we soaked a Q-Tip in warm water with mineral oil in it and then gently stroke the eye (very, very gently) in a circular motion and usually one end of teh cap comes up, I stroke long enough to get the cap soft then peel it off gently. You have to be delicate and real careful.
-----
Mike and David at 3-D Pythons
www.3dpythons.com

there was alot of the shed that didnt come off, he just shed 3 weeks ago, i moved him up to med rats and he shed 3 weeks later.

Glad to hear. This is all I ever use (if needed).
-----
Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

Cool funny as I was typing I had a Bumblebee male sitting in his sweat box as he had teh entire neck/head that didn't shed...rest of his body came off in one nice piece. This works 99.9 % of the time.
-----
Mike and David at 3-D Pythons
www.3dpythons.com

thats about the same thing that happened with mine, head and neck