Bad/Intact shed on canebrake

When I took my 4' female canebrake out of brumation, she had what appears to be a bad shed. The skin is peeled away around her lips, up to the bottom of the eyes, and has been that way for about 3 weeks.

I have tried soaking her in warm H2o several times, but no progress. I am hesitant to try to do something as involved as manually removing it alone, and there is nobody in my area I would trust to help control the snake while I work on her.

Anybody have any ideas?

I only keep balls and a couple boas but when we first started, it was really dry and hot, so I was running the ac alot to keep the house cool. Needless to say the humidity was really low and a couple of the balls had bad sheds. I did what you have done and I made sure that the humidity was returned to the proper levels. All of the left over shed came off with the next shed.

Those suck, Jim. Over the years, I have gotten a couple of rattlers in with badly stuck sheds. I can give you suggestions, but none of them ever worked for me with a shed that bad - I always ended up manually removing the skin piece by piece.
There is the obvious: long soak (looooooong soak) followed by putting the snake in a container with a damp, heavy towel...but it really sounds as if you need to soften the skin first. Wondering if some kind of skin conditioner, ie aloe or similar, would be of benefit - once she was all soaked, you could coat the towel with it before boxing her up.
I have heard that dab of mineral oil works for retained eyecaps - not sure how it would be in this scenario, though. (the bad thing about it is whether it works or not, there will probably be shed scales for a while after - at least that was the result I got when I was directed to use it as mite treatment a long time ago...what a mess, scales for a solid month)

Thanks, Harald. I have managed to induce shedding on other snakes with plain petroleum jelly, but I was hoping someone might know of a less radical solution.

I know how to remove it manually (although the wet towel in the box was a new one learned today). My main issue is that I need 4 hands. 2 to control the business end, and 2 to work on the shedding issue. Unfortunately, I only got 2!

Fortunately my rattlers have never had a problem shed. Now that I say that the next one will retain the eyecaps or something.

However, one thing I often do with other snakes is similar to the damp towel trick. I use long fibered sphagnum moss. I dampen it well and put the snake in the tub, then sit the tub on a heater to create a 100% humidity environment. The humidity along with the sphagnum being something to crawl through, usually gets the shed off, or else loosens it to the point is comes off very easily. I find that this works much better than soaking in standing water and doesn't carry the potential of drowning etc.

Sounds to me like you need to invest in a set of tubes possibly as well. I bought a set years ago and had never used them until this winter. But having them ended up saving the life of one of my females this season.

Cool, Clay, I will try the damp moss technique tomorrow. I do have tubes, and have used them before for quick, simple stuff, like injections. But the thought of trying to hold a 4 footer in a tube with one hand, while removing shed, patch by patch with the other, seems like a recipe for disaster.

I agree that even with a tube you wouldn't want to do it by yourself. I was just thinking with a tube you could use a much less skilled helper, since keeping it in the tube is pretty easy once you get it in there.

I have decided to wait for her next cycle, and keep her super humid, in cypress mulch, as soon as her eyes go clear (on the next cycle). Hopefully, the old shed will come off with the new one. She's eating rats, and acting perfectly healthy, so we'll see what happens. I think I will also use mineral oil, just before the actual shed is about to occur.

Apparently, she went through a shed cycle while in hibernation, and didn't have enough "get up and go" to slough it off. Got my fingers crossed.

Thanks, everyone for the advice. Any other thoughts are more than welcome.