Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hi my ball is about 5/6 month old and this time he shed he did not loose his right eye cap can any one tell me what to do
thanks
samuel

Go get a sponge and a pair of tweezers. Soak the eye untill the eye cap is soft and tease it off with the tweezers. If your a little too nervous about using tweezers near your balls eye, you can soak it with the sponge and then rub it off with a moist wash cloth. If worst comes to worst you can leave it on until next shed but, make darn sure the humidity is at 100% the next shed so it does not happen again. Too many retained eye caps can lead to the loss of an eye.

Good luck, Quinton

100% seems to be a little high of humidity I keep mine at 60%-65% and I get good sheds, dont mess with the tweezers, take your ball put him in a pillowcase that is damp with warm water and place the pillowcase in his enclosure it should rub right off.
thanks
tony butler

ok i will try to do what you all said and i will let you know if it works
Samuel

LoL that was uncalled for, this guy has 1 bad shed and you say things like,"100% humidity", and,"you can loose an eye". Calm down he has had 1 bad shed, you've probably had 6. If you want you can put a new hide box made out of tupaware and cut a hole into the top, next fill it with damp/wet spaghnum moss or moist/wet paper towels. He will most likely go in there regularly before a shed when he finds it. If your snake has way to many retained eye caps and you just leave one eye cap after another after another and so on then he might go blind but I don't think you would just leave it's eye caps on after all you did ask for help.

I've had plenty of bad sheds. From milk snakes, to rat snakes, to kings snakes, to boas of all sorts, to; pick one I've probably had one with a bad shed. However, with 100% humidity during the shed process I have never had any problems with retained eye caps. Correct me if I'm wrong but, will too many retained eye caps cause the loss of an eye. Or is that something that I've been too concerned with for the past decade?

I'm not looking to make waves. I just feel that it is important to not let eye caps build up.

Jeez, Quinton

Let's get some pro advice.

Please refer to Bill Loves article in the January 2006 Reptiles magazine, pg.12.