Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I saw your post that you had problems with wheat Bran. I've been using wheat bran for my adults and sub adults without any problems thus far. I'm curious as to what problems you had and any signs I should watch out for. I'm not trying to start a fight. I'm honestly curious and now slightly concerned....
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2.0.0 Iguanas, 2.4.0 Beardies, 1.2.0 Saharan/Nigerian Uromastyx, 1.1.1 Leos, 0.0.1 African Fat Tail, 1.0.0 Columbian Rainbow Boa, 0.0.1 Fla Garter Snake, 0.0.1 Corn Snake, 0.0.3 Fire Belly Toads, 1.0.0 Eastern Painted Turtle, 0.0.1 African Sideneck, 1.1.1 Horses {Baby next May!!!}, 2.2.0 cats, 0.1.0 dog, and I'm done for now.....

Hi Heather,

Don't worry, I don't take things personally... it's always good to ask ?'s and debate topics, i'm always open for that.. just ask Bennett lol.

There are a lot of reasons we chose not to continue using bran.. or sand for that matter. We have chosen newspaper/kraft paper and have been using it a long time now. Below are just some reasons that we decided not to use bran/sand anymore.

It's important to note that I'm not saying bran/sand is bad for everyone, if it is working for you great continue to use it. For our collection however this is our experience:

1. Sanitation. When dragons goto the bathroom they go often and it needs to be removed asap regardless of how "clean" the fecal is. With bran, it's hard to remove all of the fecies. Yes, you can spot clean, but even by doing that you don't remove everything. Also at times they will go and kick other bran over it thus effectively hiding the stool which can go un-noticed and over time lead to a lot of problems. They also can kick it around all over the place contaminating quite a large area.

1a. With newspaper it's easy to spot a mess and clean it immediately. The entire newspaper is removed, and the bottom piece of the cage can be disinfected and cleaned and wiped dry, then a new piece of paper is placed inside. I know nothing is perfect, but this so far we have found to be the most sanitized way of keeping the cages as clean as possible, especially in a large collection such as ours.

2. Spraying/Moisture. With bran, when we would mist our dragons heads down to offer then water, we would notice at times that bran would stick to their bodies/heads and get all over them. I did not like that and neither did the dragons. A waterbown inside the cage would more then likely fix that problem, but we choose not to utilize waterbowls. Again for sanitation and humidity reasons. It would take a long time to clean dozens and dozens of waterbowls every day to do it right. It's much faster, easier, and safer for us to mist them down.

2a. With newspaper we don't have that problem. The only problem you have to be very careful about with newspaper is to make sure when you spray/mist the dragon, the newspaper must be cleaned. If their is fecies on the paper and it gets wet even a lil it will get liquidy and run over the newspaper which can lead to severe problems if the dragon drinks off the paper or lays in it. To solve tihs problem, we mist the dragons right after their cage has been cleaned for the day to eliminate that problem.

3. Bran Sticking to Wet Items. Mainly food such as leafy greens that are still wet and pellets and the like. The dragons would knock their food off the plates into the bran and then eat the food and get mouthfuls of bran ingested as well. At times when the dragons would goto the bathroom as well their vents sometimes got caked with dried bran stuck to it thus causing them to get a little bloated/impacted. Warm soaks fixed this problem.

3a. With newspaper we do not have to worry about any substrate sticking to it. This works very well but again it is important the newspaper is clean when veggies are offered. There is also no dried/caked bran stuck to the vent when using this.

There are a few other reasons, but those are the main reasons. I also noticed the dragons would from time to time "taste" the bran and eat it. That made me nervous I didn't like that.

Again, i'm not saying bran/sand is bad for everyone. For us, it is not what we choose to use. We have a very large collection.. we are breeders we have 50 plus dragons at any given time not counting babies. It's extremely important that we have a system that works for us and our dragons.. and this is what we choose to use.

It's also important to note that I don't try and tell others what they should/shouldn't do. I offer my advice/opinion when asked, needed, or when I think I can be helpful. The rest of the time I stay out of it...

I've been breeding and keeping reptiles for just about 15 years now and I can honestly say that there is no "one way" of doing something correctly. There is however common sense and good judgement.

I couldn't tell you how to raise and breed leopard geckos to save my life, but if someone told me they needed a large swimming pool to catch some rays at I would know enough to question that and research more thoroughly before digging up and laying out the stone.

Hopefully that helped you out. Don't worry, I don't think bran is hurting your dragons or anything.. just not practical for us to use large scale.

brandon

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Dragons by Nature

I guess I find it interesting that I've seen serious warnings concerning using bran and other food products for substrate due to bacteria and other problems but people seem to ignore them.

But mention sand everyone and goes ballistic.
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0.0.2 Bearded Dragons(Ziggy and Stardust)