Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello. I currently have 5 baby cresteds. 4 are doing great. The fifth one is having trouble with a shed. I have them in 6x6 containers with 16 small holes. Each has a 1 inch cap of water and a hide. The baby's head has shed but the shed is currently ragged around it's neck and no where else is it even coming loose. it doesn't scratch or itch or bite at the shed. It's been this way for a week and 1/2. 2 days ago i put a peanut butter lid with shallow water into it's enclosure hoping that it would soak itself and that i could increase the humidity. I'm sure the humidity is higher but the baby never went near the water. I mist all of my babies twice a day. Right now i have the baby in a tiny container of water and i'm forcing it to soak. Should i also stress it by trying to pull off what i can of the shed? Should i just continue to force soak it? If so, how many times a day? The baby was born 6/5/08 so it must have shed before this. Why the problems now?
Thank you, melissa.

Hi Melissa,
You should not need to soak the crested gecko. This is a good thought but is very un-natural to the animal.
Is the shed only around the neck- you can see it starting and ending right at the neck? Is it restricting at all on the gecko?
If this seems like a ring not attached to the skin, you may wish to gently hold the gecko and cut the ring off- very gently.
Otherwise, the very best way to help the animal with its shed is to put the gecko in a deli cup (with holes) and a moist paper towel on the bottom. Sitting in this cup, the shed should start working itself off.
-----
Wally
Web Site: Supreme Gecko
e-mail: Supreme Gecko e-mail

Thank you for your reply.
I was very worried about the little guy so what i actually did was to put him in a little cup with some tepid water and a tiny drop of vegetable oil. He did not like being in the water but the cup was so little he had to stay in it. I left him in there for 15 minutes and then gently used a q-tip to remove the skin........the shed was on his neck and slightly down his sides and 2 toes had been stuck together.The skin came off very easily. I'm hoping the toes become slightly less scrunched looking now that the skin is off, the colour in his toes is still good. You're right, the poor little guy did not like this proceedure but didn't panic as i was afraid he would. He still has a bit of skin on his one side that i'm working on with a wet q-tip. Again, thank you for your response, i kinda jumped the gun on waiting for an answer because he'd been like this for about a week and i was thinking time might be running out.
melissa.

For future reference:

Our girl is usually very good, but every once in a while she has trouble with her pads. After a lot of reading we bought a product from TRex called "BioMist"... We like it better than some of the shedding products out there because, while it contains skin conditioners to ease shedding, it also has a lot of other ingredients like electrolytes, which is advertised to help the overall health of the animal and you can use it as often as you want. (It was recommended to be used for first mistings after shipping too.) I like it because I was familiar with all the ingredients! Anyways, without sounding like a commercial, we keep a bottle of this on hand and it is such a light misting spray, you can spray to soak the stuck shed directly and the geckos don't seem bothered at all.

In fact, and I have no idea how she did this exactly, one of our girls shed off a crest and then got the skin stuck back on her eye... no amount of licking could she get it off. We had to spray her directly in the face for several days, but it worked, much to everyone's relief and she didn't really mind either... which is not her personality.

Glad to hear yours is doing better, just an FYI should the little one be a problem shedder... it happens to everyone at some point.

Incomplete sheds are caused by humidity that is to low spray the cage twice a day to keep humidity high. Call a local reptile vet now!!!