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I just came from a local boa breeder who is bedding and feeding his boas on aspen. I have always moved mine to a bin lined with paper for feeding. Does anyone have any info on the acual likelyhood of a blockage from feeding on aspen. Am I being over cautious? Thanks Max

Max, I was always also worried about it too...I used to use only newspaper but the snakes really do like crawling in aspen better, so I use aspen alot now. Yes, you will have those times when that big hunk of aspen goes down with the rat and you wait patiently until he/she poops and then you feel much better...lol...But overall they do not like to get the aspen in their mouth. I also try to feed right before I change the tub or during for that matter. This helps, because the old aspen is all matted down and does not cling to the wet rat...if feeding frozen thawed.
Hope this helps. Andy
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I had the same concern before I switched many of my boas over to Aspen. But if you are feeding f/t and the rats are dry, you really don't have to worry about the Aspen sticking to them. I only use Aspen with boas that are good sized (read adult females and large males) and will take the rat right from the tongs. Some of my boas will not strike at the rat and I just lay it in their cage, they come over and eat it. For these individuals I keep them on paper substrate, paper towels to be exact.

Boas seem to feel more comfortable moving on a substrate like Aspen. You will likely notice behavior differences if you change to it. My boas were much more active. Also allows for females to nest before dropping litters.
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Gilbert Boas
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Chris how do you train them to not strike ?...lol

Mine take the rat off the tongs sometimes way before I am even ready! LOL!

Andy
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>>Chris how do you train them to not strike ?...lol

LOL

Many of mine are like yours Andy, ready to eat before the cage door is open.

But my (Garbage Disposal) big female eats at her leasure, I simple lay the appropriate prey item in her cage and she will consume it, with in an hour usually. Although when she isn't gravid it take some time as she eats 3 XXL rats a feeding which can take 30 - 40 minutes. She enjoy's her food!

Cheers
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Jeremy

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thankyou for your answers. i bed a few on aspen already. nice to know i can feed right there on the aspen. max

You should try aspen sani-chips...they work much better than shredded aspen (imo). The sanichips are a lot smaller too. Plus, consider in the wild...snakes do not get their meals on 'clean plates' so-to-speak. I'm sure they swallow all kinds of debris and dirt along with their prey. I still use caution & do not feed f/t prey that is wet.
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Sincerely, Jason
www.NortheastSnakes.com
NortheastSnakes@verizon.net

I switched everything over to Aspen about seven years ago. After a few months, I switched everything in sweater and shoe boxes back to newspaper. I had too many smaller babies that I had to agonize with because of my concern of getting a relatively large "sliver" jambed in their throat. I tried putting in a piece of newspaper and feeding them on that. That was a futile effort. I went back to newspaper for the little guys and haven't looks back. The big stuff is another story.

All my blanket or larger boxes and cages have Aspen in them. Still I try to slip a large sheet of newspaper under them when I feed. It just seems like it would be better to eat only food and not bedding too. They certainly don't need Aspen for roughage or anything. The same goes for the bigger Boas in cages.

Many of the Boas will burrow completely under the Aspen. That's pretty cool.

Now the big difference I noticed with gravid females is they do not agonize about where to give birth like they did when on newspaper. They would sometime cruse around for a couple days on the newspaper. Now with the Aspen, they clear out a spot down to the plastic pushing the Aspen around the sides making a sort of wall. Then they just hang out there until it's time. When they actually give birth, they stretch out with their tail in the "nest" and deposit the little gooey kids right there. That is a beautiful thing! The other benefit of Aspen is the female NEVER EVER crushes her own babies when on Aspen. With newspaper, most of the time they have them under the paper and will then come out sometime crushing perfectly perfect babies. That never happens any more.

I have left a litter in with the Momma for several days several times. Momma just hangs where she wants to and the babies crawl all over her and around her. She knows exactly here they are and never crushes them. I even left one litter in with the Momma for about two weeks just as an experiment. Nothing negative happened to any of them. Babies shed and so did Momma. Still they just hung out TOGETHER. It was very cute. The Momma was a seven footer.
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When you left the litter in with the mom, what did you do about all the goo? Did you clean them up and put them back. I would think that in the wild if it didn't rain or they didn't find some water to crawl through, that the goo would attract ants and it would be all over for the babies.
Mike

The birth location was cleaned up rather than leave the cage a mess.
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