Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Alright, I have been a die hard proponent for newspaper for just about every herp under the sun for the past 30 yeas. More than likely, I will continue to use newspaper for most of my herps. Now that I am the proud owner of 6 adult couperi and several up and coming hatchling couperi, I am finding that it is very difficult to stay on top of cleaning....but, that's part of the responsibility of owning a dry. Does anyone use aspen bedding? I have concerns even though I have used this stuff with other less messy species with good success. My concerns are: 1) inhalation of dust created by the wood bedding which could be irritating to my indigos 2) possible ingestion due to their messy feeding habits (but this can probably be rectified by feeding in a separate container) 3) others? I'd love to hear from the experienced folks. Perhaps there are other beddings I am missing. I really don't like cypress mulch mostly due to that it is far more difficult to clean than aspen (just not fine enough but it is great for humidity loving herps and therefore, probably good for indigos). Any thoughts, feedback, etc. would be greatly appreciated. More than likely, I will continue to use newspaper.

Thanks, Rob Carmichael
Director/Curator of the Wildlife Discovery Center
City of Lake Forest Parks & Recreation (IL)

Rob,

I use aspen with my indigos & i've had no problems. I wouldn't be concerned about the dust. However, I have some concerns about ingesting the aspen during feeding. I have seen my 02 female (03 girl has only fed once so far) ingest small amounts of aspen along with the meal & I have had to remove pieces from her mouth on a few occaisions after feeding. Trying to get something out of the mouth of a hungry indigo without getting nailed can be fun! LOL
Like you said, feeding in a seperate cage will solve this problem. Others have suggested that ingesting small amounts of aspen is "probably" no harder on them than all the other debris they ingest while eating in the wild, & I agree "for the most part" but, it still bothers me to some degree.
I may switch to news paper at some point just to ease my mind.
I highly suggest you place your new snakes on news paper & do everything else you can to keep the parents of my future hatchling male as healthy & happy as possible!

God bless!

Eric

Thanks Eric, glad to hear you haven't encountered too many problems with aspen; I look forward to hearing what others have to say. As I said, going to aspen merely simplified MY life and if it isn't in the snake's best interest, I will go back to paper. I have noticed, though, that the indigos I am testing the aspen on seem to enjoy burrowing through it (much like layers of newspaper I provide). We'll see what happens. But don't worry, I will have a beautiful male for you next summer...Lord willing of course.

I go back and forth now between newspaper and cypress mulch.
I used Aspen for quite some time and I have to say I personally don't really like it.

I think it really tends to hold the ammonia smell much more than cypress.

one good crap in the aspen and you open the door and WHAM...that ammonia hits you.

The only trouble with cypress is a lot of times it's wet when you open the bag...

i kept all my stuff on aspen up until about a year ago. now i'm back to newspaper again. sure, aspen looks good but that ammonia smell dean mentioned? he ain't kidding! WHEW!! smelled just like a bad cat box. but what really got me off aspen was the ingestion factor. no matter how careful i would be [putting the rat in a large flat box or on spread out newspaper on top of the aspen for example] but invariably all of my dry's would chew and drag a meal around thru the aspen at one time or another and end up 'breading' their rat. using newspaper you have no such worries. also, you can't always tell when they've gone in aspen either and have to rely on going around and sniffing the tanks. the pros seem to outweigh the cons so i'm back on newspaper again.

Well, after giving this a lot of thought, I think I am just going to go back to using newspaper....I've never had a problem with it in 30 years so why change now. I did feed a couple of indigos yesterday and they had their food coated w/aspen by the time they were done eating (and one will not eat outside of her cage)....that was too much stress for me to deal with. Thanks again for everyone's input. Rob

I've used aspen exclusively for all my snakes for a few years now. Impaction doesn't seem to be an issue. It is absorbant and makes spot cleaning a snap.

I've tried newspaper and in my experience, I could just wad it all up and toss it into the corner so the indigo can poop on bare cage floor, since that's what they do on their own anyway.

Every substrate has it's good and bad. Use the one that makes you feel best.

Doug T

Rob Carmichael

Hello, I have never used aspen. So I have no point of reference for you there.

With the frequent of maintenance performed on my Dry’s, I vote newspaper. I like the look of aspen as seen in other displays. I prefer the newspaper for simplicity and maintenance.

I run newspaper through a shedder and the Dry’s seem to like to borrow/cruse through it. The more the better it seems.

Congratulations on the new acquisitions.

almost all of the commercial beddings and not found any to be satisfactory...Either it's dusty(bark), sticks to the food and gets ingested(aspen, cyress, etc)...I had a really big male Uni try to regurgitate a meal while I wasn't around..The aspen stuck in his mouth and he couldn't get it out...Dead animal..

Unless you have to display I'd stick with newspaper...CG
-----
Carl W Gossett
Garage Door Herps
Monument,Colorado...northern territory of the Great Republic of Texas

CG made a note below about the bedding sticking to the food.

When I use bedding, I use it in my 6' cages that have 2' of the cage sectioned off as a hide area.

No matter what bedding I use in the main part of the cage, I ALWAYS use newspaper in the hide area, and I always feed them in there.

I know of several zoos who use cypress and have fed on it for years...and have never had impaction issues from ingestion of bedding, but I'd rather err to the safe side.

Don't you ever wonder about these snakes in the wild...the sandy soil...etc...they've GOT to injest tons of sand and dirt...leaves...pine needles...etc.??

N/P