Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a volunteer who is willing to donate time and materials to build several lidless snake racks for me. The rack will house large black rats, corns and kings. He was planning on using pine, but I do not know if it that is an acceptable building material since cedar/pine shavings are dangerous to herps. It will be sealed, but I do not know exactly what he will seal it with.
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...the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it."
Aldo Leopold (1938)

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
Calvin and Hobbes (Scientific Progress Goes 'Boink', 1991)

When you say pine, do you mean pine plywood? Solid pine may warp terribly - not real great for a snake rack, so use plywood. Anyway, sealing the pine will help keep the pine oil odor from getting into the cages. Besides, any pine plywood you get is usually fairly dry, so there is little danger anyway. I know a few people who still have plain plywood racks with no sealing. I don't know of any problems they've ever had. I've used pine shavings in cages for years with no problems. The key here is ventilation and dry shavings (not shavings cut fresh from a tree.)

One way to alleviate your fears and eliminate the need for sealing is to use lids on the boxes. Yeah, not as nice as lidless but no worries about moisture in the racks.

A great idea is to use adhesive contact paper on the inside ceilings of each compartment. This will help make the roof of each box water-resistant should you go lidless. It will also reduce the pine odor from getting into each box. Then you don't have the arduaous work of polyurethaning the rack and waiting 3 weeks for the fumes to be tolerable. Sucks. I'd go contact paper and no polyurethane. Heck, remnant pine oil in the wood is much easier on the snakes than polyurethane that still has even a slight odor.

Now cedar is different. Snakes react quickly to cedar.
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Mark