Our mojave female BP that was born September of last year (2021) just shed on 1/8 and yesterday I noticed she had a pink belly and a dull appearance. Today she is in blue stage with her eye caps blued over. I’ve never had a snake enter into a shed so soon after a shed. Is this normal? What’s the soonest you’ve experienced a ball python enter into a shed post shed?
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Sometimes snakes will emergency shed if they have an injury or mites. Do you see signs of her having mites (soaking, black specks, etc.)? Do you feed live food or is there a way she could be injured?
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No apparent injuries and she is eating F/T mice. No mites either. She seems very well adjusted. By soaking do you mean she lays in her water dish? I’ve had snakes in the past but never had mites (knock on wood.) Either way she does not lay in her water dish.
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By soaking I meant that she was spending more time than usual in the dish (you would also see black specks like pepper). It could be something totally different but those were just the likely scenarios that stood out to me.
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Could be having a growth spurt.
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Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping and that seems right. I just didn’t want to miss anything. She went straight into shed when I got her a few days before Christmas so she didn’t eat for a couple weeks and seemed a bit small for her age. She’s eating great now. I fed her a small mouse after she shed then another four days later to catch her up. Found out pretty quickly that she prefers dark mice. Didn’t balk at dark at all like she did white. May be coincidence but I’m going with it. Weird. I think she was a bit stressed out initially but she seems to be doing great by all measures now. She did defecate/urinate during shipping and then a second time a few days later. I did have to soak her and help her first shed with us. We’ve had some difficulty dialing in the humidity because winters are so dry here but, thanks to this forum, I think we have a better handle on the humidity. It did drop below 40% between mistings a few times but we’ve been able to keep it between 40 and 60 most of the time. We added larger water dishes and sphagnum moss in addition to the cyprus we’ve been using form the start in the enclosure and that helped significantly. The lids are already covered with foil. She seems to be settling in well now. Just a bit of an odd start. I’m hoping this shed goes better. Her enclosure is the Exo-Terra glass terrarium with the front opening doors and screened top. I’m not crazy about the gaps in the front doors or the vent holes along the front. I think we lose a significant amount of humidity there. Our Enchi that we’ve had since September hasn’t had any issues shedding but his enclosure is a regular 20 gallon glass aquarium.
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