Reptile & Amphibian Forums

is it safe to feed my snakes on aspen bedding?

In general, never feed any reptile on substrate it can swallow. They WILL swallow it eventually, and impaction is a serious condition. It takes $2 to buy a dedicated plastic container for feeding, and 2 seconds to put the snake in there.
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If there is a just God, how humanity would writhe in its attempt to justify its treatment of animals. - Isaac Asimov

Human industry has been in full swing for a little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do.
William McDonough, architect and designer, Sierra Club magazine

In a perfect world (Maybe even a "less snakes" world) we wouldn't feed on aspen, HOWEVER, when you have 100 going, you don't have time to take each snake out to feed it. We have fed on aspen for ATLEAST 4 years, and only one incident I can think of and that was with a wild caught ball python that got a shaving stuck in her mouth. We got it out, and took the normal precautions. AGAIN, if I only had a few snakes SURE, take them out and feed them in a different container, the only problem with this is some snakes are picky eaters, and don't like being spooked (Moved) before eating, and will shut off to eating.
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MIKE
snmreptiles.com

About the snakes being spooked before eating; that's exactly what's happened to me w/ my Cal King and my Children's python. Neither would eat when I tried to change their feeding routine.

reako45

I don't want to judge, but why do you have so many snakes that you can't find the time to feed them safely?

Or at least, have an area with newspaper down, so they can't ingest aspen.

Did you not read the post?? In four years of feeding on it I have had ONE incident, yes I said one. Do you honestly think putting a piece of newspaper down is going to help anything? Have you not seen a hognose, or corn, or any other snake eat for that matter? They hit the feeder, and who knows where they will end up (Especially corns). If I had snakes having problems with the way I feed I would obviously change the way I did things. Sorry my husbandry standards aren't up to par with where you think they should be...I'm gonna leave it at that!
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MIKE
snmreptiles.com

I hear ya there Mike,
I ran into that problem with my wild caught scarlet kingsnake. She wouldn't eat if I even looked at her funny. So, I changed the substrate to newspaper to prevent injestion and she is feeding again.