Reptile & Amphibian Forums

animals? I am looking to get my girls off of news paper so i do not have to be moving them anymore that i have to in order to clean their cage. I am just looking for replies with what you use and why in your opinion u use what u use. Thank you all in advance!
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Dave
Phila, PA

www.DNReptiles.com
Myspace/DNReptiles
Photobucket Album

cypress mulch works wonderful, it resists mold and holds humidity very well. The downside to cypress is that it can be a carrier for bugs into your collection and I don't like to use my oven for my snake substrate. Normally our snakes are on newspaper until breeding season and then I convert to lab grade shaved aspen from harlan. It's easy to spot clean, resists mold better than other brands for some reason and is fairly cheap and bug free. As laying time get's closer I will add a egg laying chamber of moistened sphagum(sp) moss that the females usually use. This usually allows for me to only have to do complete bedding changes once or twice a month which stresses the animals less I suppose.

BTW, i've never had females kept on newspaper have problems laying eggs. In fact I don't know why I change to aspen except out of convienence to me. As long as the eggs are removed before they start to dry or as long as you provide an egg laying box, and handle gently there should be no problem with keeping them on newspaper.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons:::

1.0 striped vanilla
1.0 spider
1.2 Citrus Ghost and hets
1.2 Albino and hets
2.3 het Pied
0.6 50% poss het pied
1.1 Pastel (male has additional gene going on with him)
a bunch of normal female breeders
a bunch of normal female holdbacks and several rescued normal males

0.1 columbian boa, she's a feeding monster, controls my
over production of rats, lol
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa, another rat eating monster
1.1 corns

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Yeah,if you don't get the eggs fast enough they do stick to the paper...a little warm water fixed that for me though.(I did have a few that looked like the old silly putty comic transfers.)
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Charles

We actually use cypress when breeding season comes, it hold moisture much better just in case a female has her clucth for a day or two without it being removed and it does not have to be changed as often. We actually dry all of our cypress in large containers before we use it in the cages, you dont want it to be too moist. I have never had a problem with bugs being in the cypress unless it was housed outside, and an outside bug or parasite got into it. As long as it is not saturated it should be fine. I use aspen for my hacthlings but not my adults, Aspen has "wood lice" and I always found them crawling all over my eggs, i know they cant hurt them but needless i dont use Aspen b/c of them and it is horrible for holding humidity without molding.
Just my opinions on what we do here
Kim
N.A.R.C.