Shedding Issues

Questions and topics answered on this page:

How to prevent stuck skin.
Fixing a bad skin shedding experience.
Removing stuck skin from your gecko’s head.
Removing stuck skin from your gecko’s toes.
Preparing for your gecko to shed its skin.
Leopard gecko scale loss.
Tail necrosis.

How to prevent stuck skin.

Here is my most up-to-date video on shedding - signs your gecko is going to shed, how to prepare for this, what shedding looks like and what to do if skin gets stuck on your gecko. For more details on specific topics, or experiences I’ve had, check out the videos below.

Fixing a bad skin-shedding experience

Sometimes you’ll find your gecko with stuck shed on its toes, nose, or even tail. Sometimes little grey/white flakes are even left behind. Here’s how I fixed my leopard gecko’s poor shed.

Removing stuck skin from your gecko’s head.

Here is another experience of mine which I documented in order to help other keepers. The eyes, ears and mouth are delicate places, ideally, we want to get the skin off in one pain-free swoop. This is how I did it.

Removing stuck skin from your gecko’s toes.

Here is a technique you can use to loosen stubborn stuck shed around your gecko’s toes to ensure the skin comes off easily and pain-free.

Preparing for your gecko to shed its skin.

Here are some tips on how to help prepare your leopard gecko for a shed. This is quite an old video, and since making this video I have switched to using EarthMix Arid and a deep heat projector. I find the combination of these two makes the shedding experience a breeze.

Leopard gecko scale loss.

On very rare occasions a leopard gecko may accidentally remove too many layers of skin revealing a pale, scaleless area. This happened to one of my leopard geckos back in 2016. Here’s my experience.

Tail necrosis.

Tail necrosis, also known as tail rot is a condition that occurs when stuck skin is left on the body for too long, cutting off circulation and leading to loss of toes, tails and even whole legs.