Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What are the pros and cons of each during breeding?
which do you prefer, and why?
Jim Royal

The one thing you have to worry about when using loose substrates is the fact that some of those pieces can be drawn up with the hemipenes and become infected. I know a few Boas that had to have one or both hemipenes removed because of the situation above.
-----
South Central Herpetological

I use newspaper exclusively, during breeding or otherwise. It's easier maintenance which I beleive leads to and better (more hygenic) environments for the animals. Lets face it, if you are managing more than a couple of animals, the easier and quicker it is for you to keep the cages in optimum condition, the more likely it is that you will have sufficient time and energy to do so...

I used to use aspen, but it took alot more time to maintain, I had to worry about it getting ingested during feeding, it was messy (impossible to keep IN the cages and not on the floor, requiring constant sweeping or living with a messy floor...), worrying about it sticking to hemipenes during mating, and even with "spot" cleaning, it gets matted and looks "dirty" pretty quick especially if you are misting periodically to provide additional humidity.

For me, newspaper works best, and I believe its best for the animals too.

Mark
-----
uncommonboa.com

I see quite a few photos with babies in the goo on aspen.
I've tried it more than once and gone back to newspaper.
I might like Care Fresh if I could afford it. Don't know.
jsc
-----
"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer

I had been using a combination of aspen/shredded newspaper for about 6 months or so...I wanted to try it, because it seemed much more comfortable for the snakes to lay on than flat newspaper...

But I agree, it gets dark, nasty and smelly when misted frequently (and not just where there had been urates/poo...the aspen itself was going funky)...

And absolutely impossible to keep off the floor, and out of the waterbowls...

I also started noticing, when I handled my boas, that all of them had multiple little pieces of aspen stuck between their belly scales...can't imagine that was comfortable in the least for them...

For the moment, I am back to flat newspaper...I think for the future I am going to try single face corrugated cardboard...to me it seems like a reasonable compromise. The flutes in the cardboard should provide cushioning/traction for the boas, and ease of cleanup for me...
-----
Heather Martin
---------------------------

thanks for your input, i never thought about the hemipenes getting infected
Jim Royal

A compromise might be newspaper base on floor and shredded news paper for burrowing/nesting. You get a somewhat similar effect to aspen, with a reduced risk.