Reptile & Amphibian Forums

and I got some pine shavings. I have been searching this forum, but no one talks about pine. I see a lot of recommendations for aspen, but I could not find it on my shopping spree yesterday. The pine is so soft, and I have a mama mouse going to pop any day now. I separated her to her own cage, her first litter of 10 being weaned, I put them in the larger cage with who I call the "nanny" - our unrelated female. The male is gone - 3 litters will keep us well-fed for a long time! I plan to keep a male from each mom with the unrelated female, and keep those families together for a while.

anyway.... they are loving the pine, but are there oils I should worry about for my ball python?

thanks,
Have a good day!
Go Chiefs!

Muggle

Pine shavings also contain the same type of oils as Cedar but not to the same extent. In fact all your softwoods will have these oils. Cedar is the worse, pine is not as bad but still nowhere near as good as Aspen and other hard woords.

Unfortunately not every store carries Aspen shavings. I would check Walmart if you are in Canada or the US. They should carry it. You can also use 'Yesterday's News' or CareFresh instead of pine or mixed with pine. Both these two products are made from paper. Yesterday's News is often sold as cat litter and comes in large bags of pelleted recycled newspapers that is completely non toxic. CareFresh is more expensive and made from the unused portion of wood pulp that isnt' used to make paper. It works great mixed with something else though, as I find it tends to be pretty dusty by itself. CareFresh could also be mail ordered as well.

pine is fine ha ha but it definitly SMELLS mouse urine and pine dont mix, my favorite substrate is rabbit pellets in the corners then covered w/ aspen my trays of mice are indoors here i Miami its too hot outside and i can go 2 weeks w/out cleaning cages of 1.4 mice in wire covered wash tubs w/ lots of good production!Chris............

Pine has been the most wide used substrate for small animals for a long time. I use just pine for all my rodents.. gerbils and rats...used it for hamsters and mice too with no ill effects in 10 years of breeding rodents.... 6 years of breeding them for reptiles.. If its well dried out and has a low pine smell to it then there's very little to worry about. You might run into a few individual rodents who are sensitive to the stuff.. but usually its not a problem.
-----
Lucien

1.0 Columbian Redtail Boa (BCI)
2.1 Leopard geckos (2 Blizzard and 1 het Blizzard)
0.1 Savannah Monitor
13 rats
12 Gerbils
2 Dogs
3 cats
1 Albino Corey (fish)

I've found that pine does a good job of keeping the odors down. Personally the smell of mouse urine (or snake waste) combined with aspen makes me physically ill (we're not talking a buildup, we're talking five minutes after changing cages!). I now use a combination of pine and alfalfa, occasionally add a tiny pinch of cedar, and some raw cotton from the cotton fields in the winter so the mice can make little warm nests. It could be that some of my mice didn't do well with pine, but they've long since been bred out of the breeding groups so the mice I have left like pine, like the diet I give them, and are heat resistant since this IS afterall Arizona.

I think if you have a pet mouse, and like any pet, you want it to live the longest life possible, you would not want it to be raised on Pine. Pine CAN shorten the life of a pet mouse. But I don't believe that Pine can shorten the lifespan of a mouse any more drastically than back to back breeding will do, which is usually what feeder breeders do.

I have noticed a decreasing amount of respiratory ailment type symptoms ever since I moved to 50% alfalfa and 50% pine. But that could be coincidence as that coincided with a move from one mouse place to another.

Anyway, pine is fine, by me. There will always be dissenting opinions, which I respect. Here's mine.
-----
~Sasheena

I use pine for my mice and aspen for my snakes. Actually, I've noticed that the aspen is more dusty than the pine. What I do for my mice is I have double trays for my 18 colonies and I put the pine in the clean trays several days before I change them so the pine can air/dry out. My mice no longer sneeze with this method. I also add vanilla to their water and it really cuts down on the odor.