Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just bought a baby southern florida kingsnake, and I'm trying to figure out if using Aspen bedding will be ok. The pieces range from 1" to very tiny.... is this ok, even if I'm going to be feeding him in his tank? Right now he is about 10" and eats pinkie mice like a champ. I currently have him on newspaper, but he likes to burrow, so I want to change him over to Aspen or some other suitable substrate.

My other question is if I can use Aspen bedding and just transfer him to another empty tank for feeding, how long would you suggest I wait between feeding and putting him back into his home tank?

Thanks everyone, I'm pretty new to snakes.

Many people use newspaper due to it's convience to clean up, but Aspen shaving will work fine. I'm currently using them in my new baby corn snake's tank. Hope this helps.

I've been keeping my kingsnakes on aspen bedding and feeding them on it for about 14 years. I've never had a problem with it. But you should understand you ARE taking a risk. I've read about snakes that have ingested bits of it with the food item, and have gotten very ill resulting in expensive vet visits. I've switched most of my other snakes to cypress mulch, but I keep the kingsnakes on the aspen, because they love to burrow in it. The best case scenerio would be to keep them on the aspen and remove them to another tank to feed them. One other note, the aspen really dries out the air in a tank, so I recently started giving them a high humidity retreat by putting a handful of cypress mulch under one of their hideboxes and keeping it misted with water. Doing this with aspen would result in a mildewy, moldy mess. Since doing this my milksnake no longer has trouble shedding. I used to have to rub pieces off of her, now it's all in one piece.
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1.1 Jungle Carpet Python
1.1 Ball Python
1.1 Corn Snake
0.1 Gray band Kingsnake
0.1 Desert Kingsnake
0.1 Pueblan Milksnake
1.0 Bullsnake
1.0 Rhodesian Ridgeback
0.1 Spouse
0.0.8 hatchling ball pythons