Shed in Nose? Best Way to Remove?

[Snuffles379]

Hello all,

I've been having trouble with my old boy recently, the most important of which is him refusing food. However, he also has an annoying issue that I'd hate to let him continue to deal with along with all this stress of not eating.

He always has very bad sheds (my temp, hides, and humidity are correct. It has just been a reoccurring issue since he was a juvenile) and recently he has had stuck shed building up inside of his nostril. This last shed has really clogged them and he now only has very small holes, I really would like to get this out, I know it's just a matter of pulling it off but it is literally on the very small inside rim of his nostril and there only so I have no outside shed to pull on to help him get it out. I'm afraid to use a q-tip to moisten or anything like that in case it restricts his breathing.

I'm thinking I will just have to restrain his head and use possibly tweezers to pick at them but I'm also quite afraid of doing that.

Any advice on how to proceed would be wonderful. I haven't found any info about this issue online so I'm not sure how others may have resolved it. Normally I'd make a vet run but it is extremely cold where I live and because he is already quite stressed I'd hate to put him through another run to the vet for something as simple as stuck shed.

Thanks again!

 

[sausage]

stuck shed in or on the nose normally corrects its self however if yours have not then i dont really know what you could do that wouldnt risk hurting him. you could hold him and try using a small blunt pin/needle but im afraid it might do more harm then good. if it was really bad the vet might have to knock him out and remove it?
dose your vitamins contain vit A? as this is important for health skin and shedding.

 

[Snuffles379]

Yeah, I have really been hoping that one of these sheds they would come out along with the rest of the shed on the head but instead they have just continued building up instead.
So you wouldn't recommend trying to just dab at it with a wet q-tip? I have no idea if I should be worried about getting any dampness around/in the nostril. He is very docile so I could hold him down pretty efficiently and I think I might just try and do a quick scrap over the nostril with my nail or something equally as blunt.

The vitamin/calcium mix I offer in a small bottle cap inside of his cage does indeed have vitamin a and he licks at that once in a while and when he is eating crickets their gut load has vitamin A. He's also currently getting some from the Repta Boost from Flukers, which is what I'm hand feeding him at the moment.
When he was younger I dusted all his food but I haven't done anything like that in years, is there another way I should be providing this? I try and do anything I can do help him shed, he's always absolutely refused to use any kind of moist hide so I give him routine warm water bath during shed to help him along and in the last few years he's stopped eating his shed all together.