Posted: Sat Sep 10, 2005 4:02 pm
I think he'll shed by himself in time if he just did it a month and a half ago. But it looks like he still has some smaller scutes on his left side, or are those areas portions that did shed already?
I called it scute build-up because my RES shed some of his scutes earlier in the summer, and the new ones that were exposed turned whitish and last week shed again. The scutes that shed twice look beautiful, but his vertebral scutes have not yet shed at all. I can see the growth rings on them that your turtle has and they have a whitish color to them as well. Don't know why he shed twice, but wonder if being out in the sun a lot did it. Is your turtle out in the sun a lot?
I've also noticed that Tilly seems to want to shed--when he's outside in his pool, he'll sometimes get under the edge of his corkbark and rub his shell back and forth. When I can, I hold the corkbark in one place so he can really do some rubbing (I have a rock under it to anchor it, but he rubs so hard sometimes that he dislodges it and it floats around in the pool).
"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." -Antoine de Saint Exupery-