Rat Bedding Question?

What do most of you use as rat bedding? I have a pretty nice sized breeding operation with around 100 females. The first 6 months or so I used pine shavings from the local feed store. About 6 months ago I started getting cedar chips to mix with the pine to help the smell. I know cedar is bad for small animals but I was mixing it weak, 2/3 pine to 1/3 cedar. Everything has been going fine with it. Now all of a sudden this week I have had around 10 breeding females die. Could this be from the cedar? and if so why? Or is it just a coincedience?

Bad and worse. Pine can be used, but only if you're sure it's double or even triple milled and dry. Cedar must NEVER be used with any rodent or reptile, as it has oils that can kill them. No matter the amount.

I personally use aspen for the mice and rats, same as my snakes. Other choices include Woody Pet(wood pellets), and Carefresh(shake it out first).

I use pine and newspaper. I've been using it for almost 3 years and have not had any problems.

Sorry to hear you lost so many so quickly.

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Originally Posted by FatBoy

What do most of you use as rat bedding? I have a pretty nice sized breeding operation with around 100 females. The first 6 months or so I used pine shavings from the local feed store. About 6 months ago I started getting cedar chips to mix with the pine to help the smell. I know cedar is bad for small animals but I was mixing it weak, 2/3 pine to 1/3 cedar. Everything has been going fine with it. Now all of a sudden this week I have had around 10 breeding females die. Could this be from the cedar? and if so why? Or is it just a coincedience?

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Have you added any new rats? They might carry a disease the others have no imunity to. sorry.

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Originally Posted by West Coast Jungle

Have you added any new rats? They might carry a disease the others have no imunity to. sorry.

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No. I started this colony with a dozen or so rats about a year ago. Nothing new, as bad as I hate to say it, I am leaning towards the cedar. Just hope I don't continue to lose them at this rate. Cleaned last night and went to all pine, NO CEDAR!

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Originally Posted by Argentra

Bad and worse. Pine can be used, but only if you're sure it's double or even triple milled and dry. Cedar must NEVER be used with any rodent or reptile, as it has oils that can kill them. No matter the amount.

I personally use aspen for the mice and rats, same as my snakes. Other choices include Woody Pet(wood pellets), and Carefresh(shake it out first).

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The pine comes in a plain brown paper bag, how will I know if it's milled and dried? It is just sold as pine shavings. And can the rats I have had on some cedar affect my snakes I have been feeding them to? I feed mostly weaned rats so they have not been on the cedar too long. Like I said above NO ONE is on cedar as of now.

I use pine shavings. I like the stuff that is finely shaved, but at the moment I am using the stuff that is in bigger chunks. That is what they ordered at the feed store, so that is what I am using. It seems to work well. I do have some females die every now and then, but I chocked it up to pregnancy problems. I have never had issues with males dying, so I figure they are not dying because of the pine.

Good luck, and keep us posted.

Honestly I probably wouldn't be going out on a limb to say it was the Cedar. It's highly toxic, yes pine is too, but Cedar is much stronger!

If you want to cut back on the smell you could mix your pine with the recycled paper bedding. It's safe and it really helps with the smell. I notice that I have to change my breeder rat cages (pine) twice as often as my pet rat cage (recycled paper).

Would shreaded paper work the same? Where do you get the recycled paper bedding?

I use Harlan Diamond soft bedding for both my snakes and rats and I wont use anything else going forward. The reason I like this bedding is that it is very absorbant and keeps the smell down. My colony isnt as large as yours but the only down side is it's 17.99 for a 20lb bag and right now I go through about 1.75 bags per month housing 28 rats - 2 in each bin. Coldbloods.com is where I pick mine up from and Courtland is a great guy to deal with.