Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I use America's Choice pine bedding for my mice. It is cheap and works really well with the mice.

My question to the more knowledgeable snake keepers here is would it be safe to use this product instead of aspen for snakes? I am perfectly willing to stick with the aspen, but am curious if anyone uses pine.

Pine shavings are dusty and contain more sap, aspen is a pine but a cleaner whiter wood than yellow pine or spruce pine. Most snakes seem to like it,(3"deep) not just tolerate it.

Correction: The only thing aspen has in common with pines is that it is a plant that produces seeds. It is in a totally different taxonomic division, that of flowering plants (angiosperms) rather than gymnosperms.

Generally speaking pine shavings are strongly discouraged for snake bedding due to their particular resin content being an irritant.
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See all my snakes at SerpenTrack.com

sorry your right aspen is not a type of pine, but my over all point was that most snakes do dig even under paper substrate.

Thanks for the input, guys. I have no plans to switch over to pine with the snakes. Besides, if the aspen flakes are a tad messy in the house the pine shavings would be ten times worse! The aspen lasts the snakes much longer than the pine lasts the mice, for sure!

and to be honest, I think I prefer the pine!!! I get the kiln dried pine at PetCo or PetSmart in the same big bag like the aspen. I just switched over to aspen a few weeks ago and changed out all my cages the last major cleaning. I seems to get odors quicker using the aspen and it appears to smell more septic if water is spilled, and just generally doesnt seem as absorbent as the pine. I have used pine for quite awhile and never had irritation problems with my snakes. After this aspen is used up, I will probably switch back to pine. Not saying pine is best, but IMO it works better for me.

OMG all your snakes will die from pine...

J/K

I use Sani-Chip alot for certain snakes but stretch it by mixing in nice kiln dried pine I found at the same stores you mentioned. I just like its properties better.

Pine Soft works great. So does some of the bargain brands. There are some pine shavings that are rather sappy. But the very dry shavings are fantastic. And pine holds humidity better than aspen. I've learned over time which brands have the least stringent pine odor, as you probably have.
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Mark

Also being kiln dried alleviates a lot of the phenol issues folks are wary of. I've used Pine off & on for a while and several bigger breeders I know up here all use it without issue. I think the issues or potential issues in the past were likely due to non-kiln dried stuff. I've switched a few of my snakes back to pine again & I have been happy with the results so far.

The kiln dried feature is part of the America's Choice product. It is kiln dried for maximum absorbency, multi-screened to remove irritating dust. It is used in horse stalls. Horses are very sensitive to dust and can easily get respiratory ailments from dusty bedding, so this is important.

With the bull snakes, as they grow and make yet bigger wastes, the aspen is not doing as good a job as I would think the kiln dried pine would at odor control. I keep the cage clean but the aspen seems always to have a sort of sweetish smell, like a faint zoo smell. I am seriously considering trying the pine with the bulls, at least.

One time I went to buy the America's Choice for the mice but the feed store was out so I had to buy a different product, and that wound up going directly into the garden, as it was very damp and smelled very piny.