Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey I'm new to this forum, but I read somewhere that pine bedding is bad for snakes because the resin gives off toxic fumes and whatnot like ceder does. Especially if it hasn't been kiln dried which dies the resin so it stops giving off fumes blah blah.. I'm sure you've all heard this all before..

This question arose from a recent post (I think right before this one) with pictures of pine snakes laying on pine needles/pine cones. I was wondering if them being around those pine cones/needles would be bad for them? But then I thought "They're PINE snakes right?" so they must be around sappy pine cones and needles all the time?

Anyways as a fairly new bull snake owner I can never seem to learn enough and anyone's insight would be great.

Also here are some pics of my new little Hypo het snow male bullsnake "Kraken":

He was the only hypo bull at a reptile expo in richmond. The other bull was a snow that I suspect was a was a lavender snow, but I actually have no idea what im talking about..You decide:

I cant wait to see if I can breed that het snow gene out in a couple years.. Going to have to see if I can find someone with a snow bull or maybe end up getting one of my own..

Comments welcomed -Tbo

That is a pretty little bull snake!
what sort of plant is that in the cage and is it a living plant? I have sedum growing in my lizard tubs because the tubs get natural light, but haven't thought of putting live plants in my snake cages, as they wouldn't get to do any photosynthesis.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

Well the plants are fake..When I was first setting up the vivy I thought about some live plants and then realized it was more of a headache than I wanted. And with bull snakes there isn't a lot of humidity so plants require more attention and don't do as well as in other reptile vivys such as for humid boas or geckos. That and say if you put a fern in there and for some reason your snake decides to take a nip at it, it could be toxic. The only real viable option were air plants and they were impossible to find locally and by then I just wanted the simplicity of fake.
I just stumbled upon a square foot of nice looking fake turtle grass on sale at petsmart that I cut in half, clipped together (already had holes), cut the corners at a diagonal, and sprinkled some bedding on/in it to make it look as natural as possible. I used the corners I had cut off as grassy corners. And instead of buying ridiculously over priced pieces of petsmart wood I went down to the river and found some nice drift wood to use. I cleaned and baked it in the oven at 350 deg. for 45 min to make sure there were no bacteria or anything living in it. As a little bit of a perfectionist I spent a lot of time on my vivy getting it just right with a lot of nooks and crannies for Kraken to find his happy places.
By the way he's only a couple months old but already about to switch from about 3 mice once a week to probably a rat pup or weaned rat. I haven't decided if I think he can handle a weaned yet. I fed him 3 mice today and he was acting like he was looking for more but I don't want to over feed him.

Here's a picture of the whole vivy:

The cave on the left is made of Titebond III water-proof nontoxic wood glue paper mache with aspen glued to the inside and outside. It was the cheapest and nicest nontoxic DIY hide I could think of.

I also found out that they seem to not like to bask unless able to still hide a little. So if he is looking for heat he goes up to his little tree house.

Right now our house has been a couple degrees warmer so he seems to like his little burrowed out cave on the cool side under the driftwood. (You can kinda see him slithering in if you look closely)

Between the three spots I think I gave him the option of a nice triple gradient habitat, and if he is staying in one "extreme" a lot I'll move the light closer or further away accordingly.

Snakes are tough, scales are made to protect from all types of contenders in nature, as for bedding, terpentine is made from pine so its bad when ingested with food, use aspen 3" deep.

Oh yea IM not using pine..I may be new, but I've done my homework.lol I was more sort of discussing the irony that pine snakes are named after something that is actually bad for them. Ive got one of those 4 cubic feet of compressed aspen bags. I have it about 2" thick and up to 4" up against one of the far side walls with the curved log going into it as a hide. Thanks for your reply though.