Dirty white snake

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Originally Posted by cchardwick

I recently found out that the ink on newspaper is toxic. I was using shredded newspaper for all of my rodent bedding since I could get tons of it for free and shred it in my paper shredder. All of my white rats and mice turned a dirty black color. It affected the mice the worst, their testicles were swollen, they all looked very sickly, the new babies had short tails or no tails at all. I was amazed at how badly it affected them. I changed it out and started using Cypress mulch, all of the rodents recovered in a few weeks. I fed off all of the short tailed mice. Now I avoid even touching printed newspaper with my hands.

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Interesting. The wildlife center I volunteer at has used shredded newspaper with all their probably 100+ rats and 100+ mice for years and I've never seen any of these issues. The white rats and mice stay white, everyone is born with their tails, and sickliness is very rare. However, the difference could be the type of ink used in your area's newspaper vs the type of ink used in my area's.

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Originally Posted by Godzilla78

Sounds like the title to a good hard rock song.

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^{_{i had to}}

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cchardwick

I recently found out that the ink on newspaper is toxic. I was using shredded newspaper for all of my rodent bedding since I could get tons of it for free and shred it in my paper shredder. All of my white rats and mice turned a dirty black color. It affected the mice the worst, their testicles were swollen, they all looked very sickly, the new babies had short tails or no tails at all. I was amazed at how badly it affected them. I changed it out and started using Cypress mulch, all of the rodents recovered in a few weeks. I fed off all of the short tailed mice. Now I avoid even touching printed newspaper with my hands.

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Originally Posted by Kcl

Interesting. The wildlife center I volunteer at has used shredded newspaper with all their probably 100+ rats and 100+ mice for years and I've never seen any of these issues. The white rats and mice stay white, everyone is born with their tails, and sickliness is very rare. However, the difference could be the type of ink used in your area's newspaper vs the type of ink used in my area's.

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My understanding is that the vast majority of newspaper ink is soy-based and non-toxic, though you still should not ingest it due to the dyes that are used alongside the soy-based components. However, older inks and perhaps some select instances still in use today are/were petroleum-based and reported to harbor some VOCs. It is possible you just got a bad batch. Snake keepers have been using newspaper for a long time with no observable ill effects.

I watched a Youtube video from Justin Kobylka where he talked about how he uses plain paper, as he doesn't want to get ink on his snakes from newspaper print, especially his piebalds and white snakes.
I bought a huge roll of plain brown builders paper the next day. lol