Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A friend of mine has a 2 year old corn snake that has always had piecy sheds. About 6-7 months ago, he tried to work off a piece of shed that had stuck on its tail and the tip of the tail (which was really hard and brittle already) broke off. Since then, the tail has broken off in little bits several times with sheds. Tonight he noticed that the tails at the tip of the scale are starting to look really black...almost looking burnt. Have you seen this before?? What's wrong with this snake and what can we do to fix this? Thanks!

~Kristine

1. Try to up the humidity in the cage by adding an extra water bowl or misting the cage periodically.

2. Give the snake a moist hide box filled with some type of moist medium (I use old sherbet or cool-whip containers and moistened papertowels). Keep the moist hide box in the cage all the time, not just during shed cycles and make sure to keep it moist, because eventually the medium will dry out.

3. Give the snake a soak in shallow (1/2 deep) luke warm water (for about a half hour) to try to loosen the stuck skin.

4. Take it to a good herp vet.

5. If you don't take it to a vet (which you should), at least apply some Neosporin on the tail tip to try to prevent infection.

The tail is turning black because there is shed skin still stuck to it and the tail is being constricted. There is no blood flow to the tail tip and eventually it will fall off because the tissue is becoming necrotic. I had this happen to my first snake as well. Fortunately he only lost the last 3-4 millimeters.

The only way to keep this from happening over and over is to raise the humidity. Make sure your friend gets a humidity gauge and that the humidity stays around 50-70%

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alstiver@hotmail.com

Current snakes:
1.0 '01 Hypo snow cornsnake (Tesla Coil)
0.1 '02 Ghost (pastel) cornsnake (Banshee)
1.1 '02 Bloodred cornsnakes (Desi and Luci Too)
To be added in February:
0.1 '98 Het Hypo, Het Caramel cornsnake
1.0 '00 Hypo Het Caramel cornsnake