Reptile & Amphibian Forums

With the proliferation of home-use crosscut shredders, does anybody use shred as a substrate for their snakes? I use newspaper, but I was thinking that shred would be easy to grab and dispose of, then put more in. Also, the snake could burrow in it...

Walt

That's a great idea! Finally a use for shredded junk mail!!

... and without the smell/allergy problems of wood shavings!

Walt

I've tried it. It depends on the type of paper you use. A lot of the junk mail type paper doesn't do as good of a job at absorbing as does newsprint.

i have made and tried unprinted newspaper shreddings and the dust killed mice,so i took my snakes off of it also.when i think of the time it took to make it i realized aspen is better and CHEAPER.have fun!

You said that the shredded newspaper killed your mice? I've been breeding my feeder mice on shredded news print without any problems. I think that it's cheeper in the long run than aspen for mice considering how dirty they are, but for my snakes, aspen is the way to go.. they love it.

Dave

My babies:

2 Green Iguanas (Achillies and Zim)
0.1 Leopard Gecko
1.1 Tri-colored Hondos (Dbl. Het. Ghost)
1.0 Hypo Hondo (Tigger)
1.1 Sinaloan Milksnakes
0.1 50/50 Cal King (Cali)
1 Bearded Dragon (Smaug)

i use aspen for most of my snakes,i buy 7.5 cu. ft. of pine for the rodents for $4.89.if i were to make the same volume shredding it would take hours.have fun!