My '02 female shed overnight. This morning, I looked in, and she had a beautiful 1-piece shed. But looking at her more closely, I see that two of her scales on the top of her head (nose area) are gone and there is nothing but white skin there.
I put some neosporin on it before leaving for work.
I am pretty suire the scales will not miraculously grow back. What can I expect to happen? I will continue ueing the Neosporin to prevent infection, of course.
But I am really upset over this. I upped her humidity from the usual to around 90 percent in the last two weeks, since her eyes went blue. I regularly see her drinking water. She is fat and healthy and eats f/t like a charm without even constricting.
The shed was perfect. Even the eyecaps came off. In years of having BPs, I have never seen something like this. Please help me! I searched the Archives but I only found really old posts about this.
I should describe her cage. She's in a sliding-door-in-front type acrylic cage. Astroturf substrate, although I replaced that with newspaper and moist sphagnum for the shed cycle so the Turf was not in there during shed. Also a soft-sided water bowl and 2 rubbermaid hides with no sharp edges.
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lost 2 scales on head after shed... what am I doing wrong???
Replies (3)
The cage is heated via an UTH on a thermostat. Temps are all what they should be.
I took the Rmaid hide out before shed time, since she never uses a humid hide and she burrows under the wet newspaper so that retains the humidity well. Is there a chance she could have somehow scraped her head on the rmaid hide last week, and it caused this ecale-loss?
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I had this happen about a year and a hlf ago.
The reason why?? noone could tell me either.
I assumed it was the result of injury since my male was a yearling and spent every waking hour trying to escape. In doing so he pushed his nose between the lid and tried to pry it off, often times he would fall in the process.
I also applied neosporin daily for a few weeks, he healed up nicely.
I'll show you a photo of before and today(about 10 min ago) approx. 1.5 years later.
this is the day he shed the missing scale was in the shed skin
this is a crappy photo I took today sorry about the quality
as you can see the scales has darkened but is fully recovered
Hope this helps some.
TomChambers
