Will the bedding in her cage hurt her?

[LunaTheBp]

Hi I'm an new owner for a ball python. I have been looking up information for a few days and I've known a lot about snakes in a general sense but I'm quickly finding out I dont know much about pythons.

I have been looking all around the net to find info, but I havent found what I'm looking for. I fed my snake for the first time sense I got her today but I noticed that while she was trying to eat the frozen to thawed mouse she got a lot of the coconut shavings on her food and caked to her mouth.

Is it dangerous for her to eat? I bought the eco earth coconut fiber concentrate so I think she should be ok but let me know if I should be worried.

Thanks-

[Andys-Python]

No worries, but I would use something larger so she isn't ingesting anything other than her food.
I started with fine aspen bedding and found mites in it and wet Frozen/Thawed food picked up the beadding so I switched to larger aspen shavings. I wasn't crazy about that and ended up using paper towel or cut-to-fit doggy training pads.

Others will be able to tell you what they use.

[LunaTheBp]

Thanks for the response I'm definitely going to go to something larger, the bedding she had before was coconut bark, but they didnt have any of that at pet smart so I figured this would be better than nothing, at the time I didnt realize I could use paper towels either.

If you have any other tips for a beginer I would be happy to listen and again thank you!

[Crazymonkee]

I would stick to the coconut husk. Just because the aspen is larger doesn't mean it won't get ingested. Smaller would be easier to pass than larger if it is ingested.

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[Havalian]

I would stick to the coconut husk. Just because the aspen is larger doesn't mean it won't get ingested. Smaller would be easier to pass than larger if it is ingested.

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Agreed.
The first time I possibly had my snake ingest a piece of bedding, and either swallow or dislodge it during the night before I got it to the vet.
My snake HATES having its head touched so after a couple of attempts I left it alone and scheduled an appointment.
The vet told me that the size piece I was describing should pose no problems and would pass in the next couple of bowel movements.
She even told me I could probably find it if I looked.

I agree that smaller would be better when it comes to bedding if your snake makes a habit of eating it.

[Inarikins]

Snakes have been living in the wild for millions and millions of years without being on perfectly sized substrate with perfectly dry prey items. Unless your snake gets mouthfuls and mouthfuls of substrate ingested, you're not going to see an issue. They can break down bones completely, you don't think their stomach acid can handle a bit of wood or coconut husk? My snakes are on reptibark and they ingest substrate, sometimes quite a bit, and I have yet to have an issue with it at all. If they swallow the rat and there's substrate in their mouth still, they're capable of getting the substrate out of their mouth just fine. If they couldn't, snakes would have died out long ago since only in captivity are there humans hovering anxiously with tweezers to bother their snake while it's eating and ready to pluck out that /one piece/ of substrate.

[Cissin]

Another thing you could do that I did when I use to use substrate as bedding, is place some newspaper down before you feed and get the snake onto the newspaper before offering so that it eats on the newspaper and there's no chance the prey item will get bedding all over it before eaten.

[Neal]

I use aspen and I like it.

I do dry the f/t food off so it doesn't get shavings stuck to it.

[LunaTheBp]

I think I like this option best, I was talking to a lady at the pet store and had mentioned that the snake would snap at the previous owner ( I haven't had that problem yet but perhaps there was some previous mistreatment. Not sure though.) She suggested feeding her in a separate cage to prevent this so I could line it in news paper in her old cage sense I just upgraded her to a 40 gallon tank. Do you think it might just be more stressful moving back and forth though? I would rather have her snap and just keep her more for viewing than stress her out and cause her harm.

[Neal]

I think I like this option best, I was talking to a lady at the pet store and had mentioned that the snake would snap at the previous owner ( I haven't had that problem yet but perhaps there was some previous mistreatment. Not sure though.) She suggested feeding her in a separate cage to prevent this so I could line it in news paper in her old cage sense I just upgraded her to a 40 gallon tank. Do you think it might just be more stressful moving back and forth though? I would rather have her snap and just keep her more for viewing than stress her out and cause her harm.

NO do not feed in a separate tank, the lady who told you that was an idiot. How big is your BP also because a 40 gallon tank may be way to big, especially with maintaining the right temps and humidity.