Can anyone please help?!?

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Yep! Steve has it! After a soak hold her under the faucet and run the water over wherever you are pulling skin from the whole time. Stay there until she is completely peeled. Use your fingernail to keep scraping at the skin until it comes up. It might take an entire hour but that skin cannot be left alone even for a couple hours, it can and will kill her!

[BUSHSNAKE]

geeez thats aweful, the tail skin is sometimes the easiest to get off starting at the vent in a situation like this and work in reverse

[Greg'sGarters]

The scotch tape method is for removing eye caps!

What I like to do for removing retained eye caps is to take a rubber thumb (see below), the type cashiers use for counting money, and rub that over the snake's eye. Soak the snake in lukewarm water first, to help loosen it up a bit. Please do this gently, remember, you are working with the snake's EYE, anyone (if not most people) who wear contact lenses will tell you that it is best to remove the contact lens GENTLY. Same thing goes for the snake.

rubber-thumb-guard.jpg

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Weird... I have never, in all my life, heard of or seen anyone using one of those things. And I spent 6 years of my time in retail. They weren't even on the supply list!

[ConcinusMan]

You guys know I don't sugar coat things so here goes...

That doesn't look good at all. Someone mentioned dehydration but I doubt that's the case. A snake that has retained it's shed will get that crinkly look. Usually by the time that happens, the old skin is already fused to the new one and you can't get it off without injuring the snake. I wish you luck, but I have to tell you that I've never had them survive once it gets that bad. It eventually progresses to having trouble breathing, then death.

Getting the skin off is essential, but like I said, if it's been too long you end up peeling off the new skin too, injuring the snake. And if it's gotten that far, there's not much you can do. If you don't get it off and it progresses to the point where she's having trouble breathing (she'll be "gaping" or opening her mouth and breathing will be labored) then you might want to consider euthanizing since that suffering can go on for weeks before she dies.

[d_virginiana]

Could vegetable oil help with this? (Hear me out) I know it's not typically something you'd want to put on your snake, but is there a possibility it could help with loosening the old skin from the new skin a bit?

The only reason I mention this is that a few weeks ago my turtle was having some severe issues with dry skin. I put literally only one drop of vegetable oil on the worst area of her neck and rubbed it in. The change was almost immediate and weeks later the skin is still incredibly soft and healthy, so the oil definitely has the ability to soften skin. (I only did this once btw and have since bought a humidifier that seems to help. Just so everyone knows I don't normally dunk my critters in vegetable oil )
I doubt it will get miraculous results at such an advanced stage of retained shed, but it shouldn't make the situation worse so IMO it might be worth a shot.

[ConcinusMan]

Mineral oil is best but I don't think that light vegetable oil, such as canola would hurt anything. I doubt you can make things worse by using it. Still, if it's been too long, the old and new skin become one and you can't remove one without taking the other with it.

[guidofatherof5]

I have found the running warm water method to always work. It can be a long process but worth the time. Also, if you can change the water flow to a spray that helps to get the water under the old shed. It's important you work from an area were the old and new skin meet.

[chris-uk]

I managed to get a fused shed of one of my checkered babies (it's how I learned the hard way what a retained shed was) or at least I got most of it off. Unfortunately she was also a non eater and FTT, but I managed to prevent the retained shed killing her. It took a lot of time in a sink of warm water removing pieces a millimetre or two across a bit at a time. The only thing I had that got between the old and new skin was a scalpel blade, as you can imagine it was a long drawn out operation. I prioritised splitting the old shed along the spine to give some breathing space then worked from there.

Good luck with the shed.

[snake man]

Can we get an update on how the snake is doing?