can coconut substrate be dangerous?

[scutechute]

my first post! yay!


I currently use a shredded coconut husk substrate for all my snakes. it's easy to spot clean the poop, the snakes seem to enjoy burrowing through it, it holds humidity great (for when i notice my snakes going into blue...i dump water in and mix it up a bit), it's pretty cheap and comes in convenient compressed bricks until im ready to use it. anyways, my male garter snake is a bit jumpy, he's never bitten me, but he's scared of everything and i've started feeding him in his cage now because he refuses everytime i put him in the feeding box. all my other snakes readily eat in the box except him.

sometimes when i feed him, he grabs the mouse from my tongs, and then drags it into his hide. in his hurry to do so, sometimes he drags it through the substrate and if the mouse is at all wet, it collects coconut substrate. when he's done eating, he comes out and sometimes i notice that he has a difficult time getting a stuck piece of coconut out of his mouth. he eventually gets rid of it somehow, but can injesting that stuff be dangerous for him? will it cause 'impaction' or will he simply poop it out?

thanks in advance,
scutechute

[bigballs]

welcome to the site!


i dont think its dangerous. i used to use it for a while and even if the snake ate some with the rat it didnt have any effect. if they can digest teeth and bones then i dont think coconut fibre will be a problem...

[skinymom]

I don't know if I would say dangerous either, however it just caused us a trip to the vet. Our ball George had gotten some stuck on a piece of skin that had not shed on his snout and it ended up stuck to the inside of his jaw. It wasn't serious but the vet said he is not a fan of it as a substrate. He recomended reptile carpet, newspaper, or paper towels. Hope this helps.

[TheAudOne]

We used to use it...switched to sani chips....they got the coconut stuck in there mouths to often...it looked aweful when they would rearrange there jaws after eating....all you could see was all this black bedding in there mouths

But I thought this was interesting.....we used every brand of coconut shreds....we would make it up 3-6 bricks at a time!!! And on Lizard Litter (we liked it because it was organic) it reds something interesting on the back....