Cedar has toxic resins (oils?) in it, which can cause respiratory problems with your rats for one (most people who raise rats for pets condemn cedar as well), but I'm not sure about the effect it'd have on your snakes if they're not being housed in it.

For the rats you're probably better off switching to pine or aspen - it's what I use for my pet rat and it works wonderfully. My room smells like an air freshner when I clean his cage every week and he's healthy (and fat). He had a brother for a little while that I ended up feeding to my girl snake(he wasn't very nice) and she had no problems.

Probably you're just better off with pine/aspen shavings for the rats. Still smells good, good at absorbing odor and easy to clean, not gonna cause respiratory problems.

~jenny
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1.1.1 normal ball pythons (Cindy, Darwin, and Periscope)
1.0 rex rat (Scurvy)
0.1 bunny (Spazz)
2.1 betta fishes (Vicious, Killer, and Butters)
2.2 great danes (Shasta, Odysseus, Merlot, and Watson)
1.0 fat fuzzy mutt (Smokey)
1.1 cats (Thidwick and Turtle)
2.0 horses (Buddy and Sam)
1.0 goat (Billy Jack)
2.25 chickens (Jacques the rooster and his harem)

but what I really want is more ball pythons!

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