1 year update

It's recently been Furia's first birthday, and roughly a year since I brought her home with me, so I thought I should do an update on her, aswell as give a brief explanation of the challenges this first year has thrown my way.

A year ago, Furia weighed 19 grams and measured 53 cm. Now she's at a staggering 194 grams and measures 114 cm. See for yourself:

Furia as a hatchling (in blue)

Furia 3 months old:

Furia 8 months old:

 Furia at one year:

Color change. It's obvious that, apart from having grown a lot, she's also experienced a great color change. She's progressively shifted from a dark olive green to a blueish grey shed after shed, literally. As opposed to my corn snake, Furia's shed skin is always greyish as if the skin's pigment is coming off with it as she goes lighter in color, and I think it's awesome.

Feeding. She has a lot to grow yet, for sure, but I believe she will be a fairly small specimen. She is a super picky eater, which is odd for a Vietnamese Blue Beauty snake, but it is what it is. She will fast some days before going into shed --which is always a pain in the ass because you absolutely can't tell when the moment will come-- and also when in shed. But she will randomly refuse food for whatever reason I've not been able to pinpoint yet. 

This has led me to follow a very strict feeding routine that I stick to no matter what. Finding a routine that suited Furia has not been easy, and I've come to deduct that:

• She doesn't like her mice to be thawed in water, as it seems to lose its scent.
• She gets nervous if I take out her favorite hide if she's under it right before I feed her, so I need to take it out at least an hour before feeding her.
• If I wiggle the prey before her she will panic and attack it as if it was a threat, so I need to be gentle and finding the right wiggling degree is not always easy.

I know. Finicky eater. Admittedly, feeding has been the most difficult part of keeping her so far. Not all was on her though, as I've had monstruous difficulties to find a decent mice supplier; keeping snakes in Spain is not a thing, so there aren't many local breeders and sadly, when there are, they suck. I've finally found Xaraleira and have been loving the quality of their mice as well as the packaging and customer care, so I will stick with them even if they are kind of pricey.

Taming. What drove me nuts at the beginning with Furia was her nasty behavior: she hated being handled, she was hissy, nippy and flighty. I quickly decided I didn't want a cracken as a pet, and I implemented a taming programme very soon. 

It was successful too, so I now have a VBB yearling that is adorable. I cannot say that she likes to be handled, and I can see that it stresses her in some way, but she never ever tries to bite me anymore. The taming programme worked after a little over a month, but I've kept handling her quite often to prevent her to go back to her old habits. 

Terrarium. Furia will need a bigger terrarium soon, as she's already using all the space in her 90x45x45 ExoTerra. I've put some more thought into the custom vivarium I want built for her, and I've finally decided to make the dimensions match the shelve the current terrarium is on... so it'll probably be a 150 cm long terrarium, with 35 cm width and 60 cm height. I really want to make the most of the space, so it'll have different levels for Furia to climb on. It seems like a decent space for an adult VBB to me, don't you think?

As you can see, this past year has brought a lot of growing on Furia's side and a lot of thinking on mine. I am glad to say that I am the owner of a happy healty VBB!

Scale up!

M.

How to feed a Vietnamese blue beauty sanke? - Video

Hey :)

Here's a video that I've made of an average weekly feeding session with The Fury. It differs from the feeding technique I put in place when she was a little baby, as feeding her in a different enclosure has not proven to be the real deal over time.

           

As you can see, I am currently feeding Furia two small mediums per week. I have three more mice to go, and have decided to go up a size after that, as there is no visible bulge in her body after swallowing both preys... Depending on how big the mediums are, I will probably skip from a weekly to a 5 days regimen.

See in my area there's not many mice suppliers to choose and pick from, for snakes are not all that famous in Spain. My local supplier is a great guy though, I am not complaining, he's passionate about reptiles and loves to chit chat about them, but as far as mice sizes go... meh. Until now, I've been working with smalls that looked like big fuzzies, so I am not confident that mediums will honor their name. We'll see!

I hope you like the video, and if there's something in particular you'd like to see feel free to let me know.

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M.

Snake Stats - March 2014

Hey!

Here are March stats:

	Length	Weigh
2 March 2014	79 cm	81 gr
29 March 2014	83 cm
1 April 2014		93 gr

At roughly 8 months old Furia is starting to develop a nice feeding response and becoming much less of a finicky eater. Except when due a shed, when she will ALWAYS become super secretive and will refuse any food item she's offered. I have tried, and there's no way to trick her into thinking she's not in blue...

Also her blues are starting to show more on her face and she's slowly quitting her former earth-toned olive green. 

Growth-wise, I feel like she's bulking up a bit. She'll probably stop growing at monster rates and progressively get a heavier body, which seems normal for a yearling to be.

She has become such a nice and tame girl that I may be forced to reconsider renaming her. I don't handle her as much as I did when I was carrying on the taming program, although I try to handle her at least 2 times a week. I have observed that if I don't she quickly gets jumpy and nervous during handling sessions. She barely ever rattles or hisses anymore, and when she does it's when she feels threatened by the mice I am offering her, which doesn't prevent her from eating it...

No wonder why she's grown so much! Judge for yourself:

When I first got her:

5 months later...

Scale up!

M.

Housing a Vietnamese Blue Beauty snake - Custom made vivarium project

Hey!

One of my main concerns when I bought The Fury was setting up an appropriate environment for her. 

Vietnamese Blue Beauties are not exactly like Corn snakes or Ball pythons, if you know what I mean. Furia will eventually grow to an astonishing 260 cm. Just try to see this from my point of view: being an average Spanish woman, when my snake will reach her adult size she will be 100cm taller than me. It's shocking.

I addressed the topic of housing a VBB in this post, so definitely check that out if you're looking for more general information. On today's entry, I will address my plans and projects for this ever growing girl.

I am currently housing Furia in this ExoTerra glass terrarium (90 x 45 x 45 cm), and it's been perfect so far. High enough for her to climb and long enough for her to wander around and (hopefully) not getting bored of her surroundings. Given her current length (79 cm), this terrarium is going to last her some more time, but it's absolutely not a permanent solution.

So after putting some thought into this I concluded the best thing to do is to get a custom made vivarium, large enough to be her home when she's a full grown-up. Assuming she'll reach 260cm, I've settled on a terrarium that's 160cm long, 60 cm wide and 80 cm high. It sounds to me like the mother of all terrariums... It may of course be bigger, but that's already a pretty darn big enclosure.

As for the materials, I am willing to stick with glass because it's easy to clean and visually attractive. It lets the light through and works perfectly fine with under-tank heaters. If built properly, a glass terrarium can last a considerable time, and that's exactly what I am looking for. I will most probably buy from a local shop; after closely examining their work I found it neat and practically built, plus they can implement a couple of changes I requested. They actually sent me a picture of one of their biggest terrariums (still smaller than what I intend to get)            ==>

The thing with a monster terrarium like this is that you have to get a shitload of stuff to put in there: branches to climb, places to hide, plants, rocks, ledges, etc. And: (i) buying nice stuff (I am thinking Magnaturals) in Spain is impossible; (ii) buying it online from the UK or the US is quite expensive due to shipping costs.

And yet, having quite a full terrarium will be necessary when I'll first move The Fury from one terrarium to another, as being overly exposed in a place she isn't familiar with will be a considerable source of stress. 

I don't think I'll move the beast until she's over 100 cm, and I've noticed she's bulking up rather than growing in length, so I think I still have at least 6 months ahead of me to plan and think (and build?) everything I want to put inside the custom made terrarium. 

To be continued...

Scale up!

M.

Snake Stats - February 2014

February in figures...

	Length	Weigh
2 February 2014	68 cm	57 gr
23 February 2014		72 gr
2 March 2014	79 cm	81 gr

This month has been way more stable than January: no shedding process, hence no fasting for the Fury. Plus I decided to start a short plumping up regimen after her last shed on January 27: I fed her twice the first week and regularly after that. It seems to have been effective: she grew 3 cm in January and 10 in February, with roughly the same amount of fasting days.

Snake Stats - January 2014

This month in figures...

	Length	Weigh
26 December 2013	65 cm	47 gr
2 February 2014	68 cm	57 gr

January was a bit of a roller coaster. On the positive side, Furia had the first nice shed in months. On the negative one, she insisted in refusing food even after shedding, and went on 20 days without eating. Of course, her growth has suffered from this, as she only gained 3cm. 

I am assuming winter is affecting The Fury's appetite; cold slows down snakes' metabolism and reduces their appetite and general activity. We'll see if she proves to be a true VBB during the summer.








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M.

Snake Stats - December 2013

These are this past month's figures:

	Length	Weigh
18 November 2013	59 cm	36 gr
8 December 2013	-	45 gr
26 December 2013	65 cm	47 gr

The Fury is getting long and slender, she's grown quite a bit in length although the weigh is not following up. That's due to this month's shedding time; Furia does not accept food when in shed or about to be. She's gone 16 days without eating this time, so that's that.

I cannot tell weigh-wise, but she's at a stable 6 cm / month growth rate in length. I am impressed!

Scale up!

M.

How to clean a terrarium? How to spot cleaning and full-on cleaning.

After you get your enclosure pimped up with all you need it will eventually be time to clean. 

Excrements will need to be removed swiftly, so you need to be on the lookout a couple of days after feeding your Vietnamese Blue beauty. Snakes usually excrete one single time after digesting, though other biological/digestive rythms are not uncommon and should not be a source of concern. 

If you're a recent snake owner or just want to make sure your VBB's excrements are normal, there's a picture of what you should find in your tank: 

Spot-cleaning is enough for safely removing excrements from your terrarium. Just keep in mind to remove all dampened bedding; as always, it's better to be safe than sorry so I usually remove everything including 3cm of bedding around the excrements, to be sure everything is coming out. I then add some more fresh bedding and voilà!

But a massive clean-up will eventually be necessary; I usually get it done once a month and it takes me around an hour and a half because I like to be thorough. The more stuff you have on your terrarium, the longer it will take for you to clean; it's mathematical.

Here's what I do on a full clean-up day:

1. I take The Fury out of her terrarium and lock her in a RUB with one hide. In order not to stress her too much, I place that RUB in a room I won't be using during the clean-up process.                                                                                                                 
2. I pour cold water in my bath tub and add some bleach (the ratio should be around 1:10).                                                                                                                                                         
3. I remove every object I have in the terrarium: caves, hides, branches, statues, vines, pastic foliage, water bowl. I place them in the mix of bleach & water, making sure every part of those objects is wet or soaking in the mixture.                                                                                                                                         
4. I also take my feeding gear and let it soak in the tub: glass jar, thongs, feeding bowl.                                                                                                                           
5. In the meantime, I remove ALL the aspen bedding and throw it away. You may think this is a waste of bedding, but it's really not. Old shed skin, urates and excrements may be found in there, no matter how thorough you are while spot-cleaning. I'd rather not have bacteria growing up in my snakes' tank...                                                                                                                         
6. When my terrarium is empty, I prepare some more bleach & water mixture in a small bowl, and clean the whole enclosure with it and a cleaning sponge.                                                                                                                             
7. I then dry the terrarium with paper towels that I dispose of.                                                                                                                                
8. In order to make sure no bleach residue is left behind, I thorughly clean my sponge and give a couple more wipes to the tank with just water. Then, I re-dry it with new paper towels.                                                                                                                    
9. I like to let my tank to air-dry for a little while, with the doors open and the roof taken out.                                                                                                                                         
10. In the meanwhile, I thoroughly rinse the objects that had been soaking in my bath tub with plain water. This step is important in order to ensure no bleach will be left behind for your snake to be in contact with.                                                                                                                        
11. They can then be air-dried (e. g. for the plastic foliage, vines and branches) or dried with paper towels. When 100% dry, it's time to re-build a nice terrarium!

In order to avoid that The Fury gets bored of her surrounding I usually vary my terrarium's setting from one clean-up to the other by just changing the items' placement. That's really up to you, but in my opinion a healthy snake will need to have its curiosity triggered and its mind challenged by new landscapes...

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M.

How to raise humidity in a terrarium? / How to make a moist hide

Vietnamese Blue Beauty snakes don't require any specific humidity level as long as they have access to a large (and I mean LARGE) water bowl.

With that said, you may want to consider raising your terrarium's humidity level when your snake is due a shed. A good, one-piece shed requires humidity; if you live in a dry place, you will need to raise it artificially. 

There are a few ways to do this:

1. Move the water bowl above the heat mat (if you have one). This easy step will allow more water to evaporate than keeping the water in the cold side of the tank. Depending on how much you need to increase the humidity level, you may also want to make sure the evaporated water is kept in the terrerarium to the further possible extent by covering its top with a blanket or a plastic bag / cover.

2. Spray water once or twice a day. Just try to keep the spraying moderate.

3. Put damp sphagnum moss in your terrarium. Also, no need to buy it fresh; you can get a large batch, cut it into sections and freeze the ones you will not use. 

To get them ready to use just pour boiling water over them and let them soak in for a while. Pat them with a towel or tissue until they're damp -not wet!- and put them in your terrarium. Voilà!

4. Set a moist hide. First of all, pick a container. Any reptile hide or cave will work, as well as any tupperware or RUB, provided that you cut a hole in it for your snake to get in and out. Second, get some dampening material, i.e. paper or fabric tissues, towels, sphagnum moss, you name it. Third, moisten your dampening material with water and place it in your hide. Leave it preferably in the hot side of your terrarium and let the snake make use of it. If you're worried your snake won't, take all other hides out or leave only moist hides for it to sneak in.

Here's the quick moist hide I made last time The Fury had to shed:

All methods above can be combined as it suits you best. However, keep an eye on your hygrometer, you don't want humidity to raise too much.

For reference, my snakes usually get good sheds when humidity is over 50%. However, I like not to get it under 60% when a shed is due.

Let me know what you think.

Scale up!

M.

How to measure your snake?

I'm all in for keeping record of my snakes' growth; not only to pat myself in the back and show off, but because it evidences a bunch of stuff.

At first, in what seems the paleolithic, I simply measured my corn snake's shed skin. It's so much easier than to get your snake ligned up... BUT it's not accurate. Definitely not. If you've held recently shed skin in your hands you know it feels moist and is quite stretchy. In fact, your snake may very well have stretched it while slithering off of it. Ditch this option.

What has worked wonders ever since is the Snake Measurer Serpiwidget. 

Directions

1. Take a picture of your snake next to a ruler or any object that can work as reference (pen, phone, etc.), like so:

2. Upload the picture to the Snake Measurer's site.

3. Measure your ruler or reference object and specify it's length in the Snake Measurer (remember to specify the measure unit).

4. Go through your snake's body from one end to the other, trying to select the centre of its body. If your snake shape is curvy, like in the picture above, I'd recommend to select small portions of body each time, even though the program is going to mimic the curves as accurately as possible.

5. Feel awesome because your snake has grown.

I hope this helped :)

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M.

Notes on: VBB shedding (I)

The Fury has shed once a month since I've got her, and is about to do so again for the third time.

Her first shed happened a few days after I first brought her home and went on like a charm. The second one, on the other hand, was awful (you can find the details and pictures here). It got me trying to pinpoint what had changed between the two, so I would be able to counterrest it for Furia's third shed, which is imminent.

I finally figured out the one thing that diferred in The Fury's viv between October and November: I turned on the heat mat. As simple as that!

And yet, at that moment I didn't realize turning the heat on would reduce the humidity level in my VBB's terrarium. It lowered to 40% and that sufficed for Furia to have a whole retained shed.

In a day or two, after her third shed, I'll hopefully be able to confirm my veredict...

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M.






Edit - 21 December 2013:

Furia had an awful shed again yesterday. Temps were ok and humidity was up to 65-70%.

Her whole face had come off normally *relief* but 80% of her skin was still there. I put her in a RUB with 1,5 cm of warm water and a towel for her tu rub against, put that partially in the hot side of her terrarium and left her for half an hour. When I came back, she had shed 1/3 of her body, so I left her to it for another half an hour. After that, I found a perfect shed, up to her tail tip!

Note to self: add a moist hide just when her eyes clear next time.

Scale up!

M.

Edit - 2 February 2014:

In order to start 2014 with a nice shed I added a homemade moist hide in Furia's terrarium right after I noticed her eyes were starting to be opaque. She was reluctant to hide in there so I was forced to remove all other hides... and make her. 

It WORKED. I found a one-piece perfect shed!

Note to self: I didn't do anything else to raise humidity in Furia's terrarium this time; it was stable at 40%. Placing a moist hide seems to be the winning method for the Beast.

How to feed a Vietnamese Blue Beauty snake. Snake feeding gear.

How to feed your VBB will come down to your personal preferences. Here's what I use and why:

Glass jar. As I've had some trouble getting Furia to feed on frozen/thawed mice, I had to find a way to defrost my pinkies while keeping their original scent as much as possible. After trying several methods, I discovered the one that suits me and the beast the better. A closed glass jar will keep the mice's scent, will avoid contact with water if you put it in a casserole to heat and will prevent the mice from going bad if your snake refuses to eat. Put it in the fridge and call it a day!

Thongs. I have never enjoyed the idea to hold dead mice in my hands to feed it to my snakes, so I have used feeding thongs from the start [purchased off eBay, here]. I'd also rather The Fury doesn't associate my body scent with being fed, and that's just one way to ensure that. Again, it's a personal preference, many snake owners don't bother and have never had a problem.

Feeding bowl. I only use the feeding bowl (soap holder) in rare exceptions now, usually when I am in a hurry and don't have the time to feed Furia, then I just leave the pinkies in the bowl for her to find and eat. It prevents her from ingurging bedding and suffer from impaction. I don't really think it is mandatory, as snakes surely ingurge dirt and soil with their meals in the wild, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Until here, all I use when I feed Furia in her terrarium, which is being her personal favorite lately. Check it out:

            


Additional feeding gear (optional):

Back when I started with The Fury she was quite a picky eater, and I found I had more chances to succeed at feeding her when she was fed in a different enclosure.

Feeding R.U.B. This is something I never used with my corn but always did with my Vietnamese Blue Beauty hatchling.

Why? They are said to have such a ferocious feeding response that I worked to separate feeding and handling in my VBB's mind as much as possible.

So what I did is that I put all my feeding gear at hand, take The Fury from her terrarium, put her in the R.U.B. and fed her there. When she was done and her meals were down the lower half of her body, I put her back in her terrarium and leave her be for 48h, in order to allow her to digest peacefully. 


A snake handled while digesting can get stressed and regurge its meal, so it's really better to leave them to it ;)

Scale up!

M.

Bad shed, what to do? How to manually remove un-shed skin from a Vietnamese Blue Beauty snake.

After being in blue, your snake will eventually shed its skin. If everything goes well, you should end up with one piece of old skin going from the snake's nose to its tail.

If your snake has had a bad shed, you'll find scattered pieces of old skin in your terrarium. Make sure you're able to complete the puzzle; if not, keep reading! If it's had an awful shed, you'll notice this:

Can you see the wrinkles forming on The Fury's skin? Nasty. Her old skin was still adhered to her new one, and she hadn't been able to slither off of it. In some parts of her body, ragged pieces of skin were hanging:

After taking a close look to Furia's terrarium, I found this:

Obviously not enough skin to cover a 50cm snake, this was the ultimate evidence of a bad shed.

Un-shed skin has to be removed as it may impede a correct blood flow and even lead to necrosis. After a bad shed, quickly examine your snake in order to evaluate damages. You have to pay special attention to (i) retained eye caps, and (ii) retained tail skin. Every piece of old skin must come off, but eyes and tail are especially sensible. In some cases, a retained tail tip may cause the death of skin tissue and even tail loss.

You want to make sure that both spectacles have been correctly shed, so you need to look for this:

If you notice un-shed skin anywhere on your snake's body, there are a few measures you can take; ranged from lighter to harsher:

1º The towel method. Cover your snake with a towel and put light pressure with both of your hands while you let your snake slither its way out. If you find ragged pieces of skin in your towel, the measure is working. Consider repeating. 

Tip: this measure works well when the un-shed skin on your snake is still humid. If dry, skip to the next one!

2º Moisturizing with olive oil. If there is a stubborn piece of skin refusing to come off, you can apply olive oil (or any other oil) to the area with a cotton ball and let the skin get impregned by it. After some minutes, try to manually remove the old skin. If it doesn't come off, let it work by itself. Put the snake back in its terrarium and come back later to see if the skin has effectively been shed. If not, you can repeat or try with the methods listed below.

This method is not appropriate for a large un-shed piece of skin!

3º The humidity cure. Place your snake in a R.U.B. with a damp towel covering 100% of its floor. Leave your snake in there for several hours or overnight. Humidity will help the old skin to come off. If there's stubborn un-shed skin, you can then use the towel method above.

4º The warm bath. Put enough warm water to cover 2/3 of your snake's height in a R.U.B., as shown below, and let your snake bathe for 20 to 30 minutes. After that, try the towel method explained in no. 1.

Tip: you can also put a folded towel in the RUB floor; it will get extremely wet, but will likely help the old skin to come off easily and naturally as your snake wanders by. This works best if you put part of your snake's body between the tower folds (and pray it doesn't move too much).

5º The manual removal. After all other measures have been tried and failed, try to manually (and very gently) remove your snake's old skin. For this, the snake's skin MUST be moist, otherwise you will very likely hurt your snake.

The Fury is a feisty snake, but calmed down by herself when I attempted to manually remove her old skin. I can't say she was comfortable, but she made the process easy by not moving as she felt it was something good, I guess. Either way, it took me a good 30 minutes, so you might want to put some music on before you start ;)

Manual removal has no secrets. Just be careful not to hurt your snake by pulling up the skin too fast and don't forget any piece of skin, especially not the eye caps and tail tip. You can try to mimic ecdysis' natural process by rolling back the old skin, from the head to the tail.

I hope this proves useful! If you want to share your results or any technique that has not been listed in this post, please do in the comments section below or by email :) I would love to hear from you.

In the meantime, scale up!

M.

Keeping record - get your Vietnamese Blue Beauty's business straight.

As you know, I keep record of my VBB's data, and it's obviously not only to write my Snake Stats but to be able to control that everything is fine.

You can do as you like best; I am quite old school and get it all written down by hand in a specific notebook. These are the events I keep record of:

1. Feeds & prey size. You will probably feed your snake every week for a long time, so it's quite easy to remember the day your snake is due a meal, but circumstances may bring you to feed your snake every 5, 10 or 14 days. Then, it becomes tricky. Having it noted down makes it a no-brainer... Also, regarding the prey size, it's always good to know for how long you've been feeding your snake this or that mice size in order to be able to evaluate if your snake is growing adequately or if you should increase the size of the prey, for example.                                                                                 
2. Sheds. The time elapsed between sheds is indicative of various things (as explained here). A growth spurt, a skin injury, parasites, etc. It's good to get your data straight just in case you need to check it later on; after a while you will not be able to remember when or how often did your snake go through ecdysis.                                                                                                             
3. Weight & length. Controling your Vietnamese Blue Beauty's growth is very important, as it can evidence health issues and internal (digestive) injuries.                                                                                                                         
4. Other random stuff. In here I just write down if The Fury was grumpy, if she seems to have injured herself and where, if she takes too long to poo, if she does it too often, if she's more active, if she's more secretive, you name it. Anything that seems relevant or important at the time.

Scale up!

M.

Is my Vietnamese Beauty snake in blue?

Any snake will eventually prepare for ecdysis (aka shed its skin). There are a few signs to recognize the different phases of this process. Here we go:

How do I know my snake is about to shed? You'll notice the start of the shedding process because your snake's colors will become duller, paler and kind of greyed out. Depending on the color of your snake, this will be fairly obvious; it particularly stands out in darker colors. 

The ultimate evidence that your snake is about to shed is that its eyes will become clouded and opaque. A snake is continually getting things in its eyes. I mean, can you imagine tunneling in 2m of aspen bedding with your eyes open and without using your hands? Yeah, it sucks. So in order to protect their eyes, snakes have specific scales covering them, known as spectacles or brilles. Just like the rest of the snake's scales, the spectacles will be shed and replaced by new ones, and start detaching from them. This is known as "being in blue".

You can find an example below. The first picture was taken when Furia was in blue, the second after a shed (click to enlarge).

You can tell the state she's in just by looking at her eye and "eyeliner". Simple :)

Another sign that your snake is approaching ecdysis is that it will usually become secretive and hide for several days in a row.

After two or three days of having clouded eyes, they will become clear again. Then, you're sure to have your snake shed its skin in another two or three days. And that's when you have to prepare the shedding gear. More on this in a later post!

Why does a snake shed? Well, there are various reasons for this:

1. Snakes need to periodically renew their skin's outer layer. It will happen more often as hatchlings and sub-adults, when their growing rate is higher, but they will keep doing it throughout their lives.

2. They will also shed their skin after an injury, in order to quickly remove damaged scales. That can take several ecdysis in a row.

3. In females, it can indicate that they are ready to lay their eggs after brumation.

4. It can also evidence the presence of skin parasites such as mites that the snake is inefficiently trying to get rid of.

Snakes don't show their physical state as plainly as a dog or a human, so you have to constantly read the signs. It is useful to keep record of every shed in order to be able to check your data every time and again to determine whether or not a specific shed may be evidencing a health issue.

Scale up!

M.