Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I keep alot of essential oils around my house and use alot of herbs for personal health. I would like to know if anyone knows of any oils that are toxic to snake? The ones that I keep on hand and use the most for cleaning and first aid include: tea tree oil, eucalyptus, orange, clove, peppermint, and lavender. I use others if these main ones don't work (which is extremely rare) and would like to be able to use herbs and oils with my snakes should the need arise but I do not want to use anything that is toxic and I have not yet found a list of toxic herbs/oils for snakes. Any help is appreciated. Thanks, Rachel

A better question would be more of what oils are not toxic. It's going to be difficult for someone to actually tell you a certain oil is toxic without opening possible debate. Unless the oil has actually been clinically tested you really don't know and anything else is just a personal opinion. Many different oils however have been proven to be more safe than others however. Mineral oil, vegetable oil. Clove oil has been used for mite treatment however it's also been used as a anesthesia and can be fatal in high doses. Just for the record it really don't work as an anesthesia it causes slight nerve paralysis making it appear anesthetized. I'm actually curious what answers you'll receive too.

I re-read my post and just to clarify. I was saying mineral oil, vegetable oil, and clove oil has been used for mite treatment. Only the clove oil has been used for anesthesia.

Nobody can likely definitively tell you what is toxic. And of course, it all depends on the level and frequency of exposure. For example, orange oil in concentration is nasty stuff, but a snake can crawl around a bunch of oranges with no worries.

I use a natural soap containing concentrated oils to clean cages, and thus far (about 6 months) I have not seen any problems.

I tried eucalyptus berries to treat for mites once. After about a week of exposure directly in the cages, the snakes did not show any ill effects. BTW, I don't think the eucalyptus killed the mites, but as far as I can tell it did seem to keep them away from the treated cages. That was years ago before Provent a Mite came out and when I was bringing in new animals frequently.

Monitoring your animals is a must of course.
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Mark