Reptile & Amphibian Forums

At what temp should you bake wood at to kill off any germs or bugs in it before putting it in with your snake?

If memory serves, I recall 400 degrees for 15 min. I also recall doing this, and would suggest knowing if your oven runs high. My house smelled like a campfire for days (not such a bad thing, really, but it might help to do it on a nice day when you have the option of opening the windows).

You will want to use your zircon encrusted tweezers to take the wood out, as it will be quite hot of course.

Duffy ;D

     The 400 degrees suggested by Duffy is way too hot, especially if your oven runs a little hot anyway. Paper, wood, cellulose in general will burst into flame at 451 degrees (which is where the book/movie title Fahrenheit 451 comes from) and will start to scorch much lower than that. All that you're trying to do is kill off the little critters, and many of them will expire at around 150 or so. I would set your oven at 250. Then you have a margin of error (if it runs to 300 or so) that still shouldn't burn the wood. Let the oven preheat, then leave the wood in for 20 to 30 minutes or so, to give the heat time to soak into the depths of the wood (if you start to smell smoke, take out the wood and try again later with a lower oven temperature). When it's finished, take it out with a regular potholder and let it cool completely. I did this to a branch of boxelder (Acer negundo) which I use with my emerald boa and it worked well.
     You can repeat the treatment to disinfect the wood later as part of your regular cleaning, but for that I use hydrogen peroxide instead.