Wood shavings can be spot cleaned like your bark but it still needs to be changed on Occasion. I like to change mine when it begins to "discolor" or get too compacted. It is an organic material with a high surface area so it does decay. Wood shavings will also mold easily around the water bowl etc. I have noticed that as it gets older the humidity in the cage gets higher (I use plastic bins as cages.) An inexpensive bag of Aspen should last a long time and with the exception of newspaper is probably the cheapest alternative out there. The finer shavings seem to settle a lot better than the large chips giving the snake a better surface to lie and crawl on, at the same time being loose enough to easily burrow in. My experience with this is when I purchased a bag of Aspen and later realized that it consisted of very large shavings. Most bags I have purchased had been smaller. The smaller shavings I use are large enough to prevent easy ingestion by young snakes. Use fish large enough to fill the mouth of the snake so shavings are more easily dislodged from the fish as it passes by the labial scales (around the mouth) of the snake and are less apt to be swallowed. It also helps to feed them in a wider shallow bowl. As for feeding them mice, I have had much better results than with fish. I only have a few Garters unwilling to convert to mice. Rodents are more nutritious per meal and the snake can be fed less often.



Randy
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Firehouse Herps

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• A few Garter questions... - Green_Ranger, Wed Oct 6 08:57:31 2004
• RE: A few Garter questions... - chailatte, Wed Oct 6 13:18:11 2004
• RE: A few Garter questions... - wildthing642, Wed Oct 6 17:03:24 2004
• RE: Aspen is fine - rhallman, Wed Oct 6 20:27:11 2004
• RE: Aspen is fine - Green_Ranger, Wed Oct 6 21:00:38 2004
• RE: Aspen is fine - rhallman, Thu Oct 7 11:26:51 2004
• RE: Aspen is fine - Green_Ranger, Thu Oct 7 12:28:21 2004