I bought this probably 8-10 year old Sabal and they had the lower half skinned. We just had a pretty big downpour and wind event and the squirrels decided to steal material for a nest or whatever they build and put pressure on the boots to cause them to fall.

My boots are now falling apart. Is this common for boots so high up the trunk to be loose? I actually taped some boots back but it's still a mess.. I understand boots fall off on the lower half.

The circled part all have very loose boots. Everything above it is still form.

 

Do you have a sprinkler system?

I don't think it's a problem.  That's about how many boots stay on my Livistona chinensis.  This Sabal mexicana on the left was skinned up to a few feet of the crown.  I've seen others in the Harlingen area with fewer boots than this.  If sprinklers are hitting the boots (as @SeanK seems to be suggesting) that is probably accelerating the loosening of the boots.  What part of Texas are you in?  High humidity can also be a factor in loosening boots.

1 hour ago, SeanK said:

Do you have a sprinkler system?

I do but I adjusted all the sprinklers so it doesn't hit the tree at all. I just water with a hose pointed into the soil

Nothing wrong with them falling off.  Some retain them, some don't.

I believe there's a lot of genetics involved in how Sabal boots function. I've seen plantings of Sabals where some palms show bare trunks all the way up to the crown whereas others hold onto their boots to the ground. If the boots are loose or slipping you can usually peel them off easily. If they don't want to let go, leave them alone. I cringe at the thought of skinning boots off as a "fashion statement". It's a living entity not an object to be cut or hacked at to impress onlookers and attract pests and disease. And if someone is fixing to get his/her knickers in a twist because he/she thinks I'm dissing them, relax. I'm just stating my personal preference. The Sabal is one of the most abused palms around despite being just about the storm hardiest. People need to leave them in peace. Nothing more attractive than the "puffball on a stick" look of a fully leafed Sabal.

Nothing wrong with what’s going on there, perfect bug habitat a god sign of healthy ecosystem keeping the insect symbiotic relationships in check, I can’t see scale being an issue on a palm that size, might be a few mealy bugs there but that good bird food we all love birds in the garden. 

I agree you have nothing to worry about. The boot-jacks are a natural feature of most Sabal palms but it will be a variable trait depending on species, genetics or other factors. Certainly if they get a lot of rain, irrigation, etc., they will have a much higher tendency to fall off. It is the reverse of what we have here in the Palm Springs desert...where coconuts generally, and very surprisingly to most who behold them, hold on to their leaf-bases for ever and ever until pulled...looking very scruffy and unattractive...because in Florida and the tropics where there is plenty of humidity and rain, they naturally soften and degrade, ultimately tearing away and hitting the ground as a perfect mulch, with no intervention by the hands of man.

My Sabal mexicanas get loose boots half way up the trunk while the boots above and below stay persistent.  It’s not a sprinkler thing.  But while they are very loose and will rip off, they do not do so at all cleanly, which is frustrating.  The dang things look like they are hanging down by a thread, but man they are hard to pull fully off.  They put on trunk so fast here in north Louisiana that they would look great with smooth trunks, as they would with full boots—but in-between is not eye appealing 

Update .. the squirrel chewed off more boots. So right now it's not just that the boots are loose, but that the squirrel chewed off good boots where it attaches. If boots are forcibly removed, should I now be worried about diseases and palm tree health? 

Maybe squirrels are the cause— perhaps to get to and eat trapped seed or to retrieve nesting material.  I would not worry about this attracting disease as they are probably just chewing brown material.  There is pretty good evidence that live tissue cutting **can** attract certain insect pests