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missing scales?

Kali
04-01-2009, 04:40 PM
After the last shed of my male Thomas I noticed white spots on different parts of his body, as if a scale is missing and the white is an empty space ??? What happened? I have never seen something like that on him before!
The shed started a little bad, the skin on te head came off in pieces (I sprayed his cage regularly the week before shedding though), so I put him in a box with moist sphagnum for a while. After that I let him crawl through my hands, and the skin came off very easily. Did Il do something wrong? Anyone any ideas?
On all pics you can see the white spots where the scales seem to be missing... there are two on his head...

Also, and he has had this for a while now, you can see on the third pic, he has a sort of dent (close by my hand), There is a dent on both sides (you see only one on the pic) and he looks like he got trapped between the glass doors of his cage... but I know that didn't happen! Nor are there things in his cage he could have gotten himself stuck in such a way. Just don't know what happened... :(

Michael823
04-01-2009, 05:29 PM
Some scales on my ghost corn snake appear to turn white after shedding and it looks similair to the scales on your snake, though it's hard to tell. I would check the shed for scales still attached to it and feel for missing scales, but I think it's normal for some scales to turn whiter after shedding.

Kali
04-01-2009, 05:47 PM
Unfortunately I have already thrown away the shed skin. I have checked his white spots, some do indeed seem to be clear white scales between the colored ones, but others are really missing scales... holes in the "skin" so to speek... :(
Is that possible? here and there a single scale coming off with the shed? I'd think they were more firmly set in the new layer of scales... Those places aren't like little wounds either... just a hole in stead of a scale.
And if something like that is possible, what could be the reason? Something I can do about it?
I've never heard of it, so hopefully someone has some info for me.