Baking Wood to Disinfect

[LostJuly4th]

This might be a dumb question, but bear with me.

So so I picked up a nice piece of grape wood from the local expo for my python's enclosure. When I got it home I baked it for about an hour @ 300F to get rid of anything on the wood. I think I kinda over did it though. I'm a terrible cook... It wasn't charred but it got darker and smells pretty strongly of smoke. Think wood fireplace type smell. I let it sit out for about a week hoping the smell would go away. Then I went ahead and put it in the enclosure. Well now the enclosure smells pretty strongly of that smokey wood smell. I know snakes are pretty sensitive to smells and smoke. Could this smokey smell be potentially harmful? Anybody else baked wood and had this problem?

Thanks.

[Bogertophis]

Sorry to say I think I'd toss it...yes, you burnt it. The only way to salvage it at this point may be to coat it with a non-toxic waterproofing product or sealant that
dries non-toxic (so as to contain the smell). Scientists do tell us that charring of food is carcinogenic (even on your steak!!!) so I'd have to consider a burnt log to
also be detrimental to the health of your snake as it is...because he'll be touching it. Can't say if that's as bad as ingesting it, but I wouldn't take the risk, even if
it didn't smell bad.

For future reference, if you want to bake some wood to kill insects, it's done on a very "low & slow" oven temperature, not over 250*....200* is fine, and it helps
to get the wood wet first too, so it won't burn so fast in the oven. It's the heat & length of time that kills the insects, & it will dry out as it bakes for an hour or
so. Keep an eye on it too...don't set fire to the kitchen.

[bcr229]

For future reference, if you want to bake some wood to kill insects, it's done on a very "low & slow" oven temperature, not over 250*....200* is fine, and it helps to get the wood wet first too, so it won't burn so fast in the oven. It's the heat & length of time that kills the insects, & it will dry out as it bakes for an hour or so. Keep an eye on it too...don't set fire to the kitchen.

This. Bear in mind that pasteurization for milk occurs at 145*F for 30 minutes. So, baking wood at 150-175*F for 60 minutes to let the heat penetrate deep into the wood where insects may have burrowed will be plenty.

[Bogertophis]

Thanks! That's probably what I did in the past (150-175*) but it's been quite a while. 250* did sound too high.

[pretends2bnormal]

My oven turns on only slightly below the 200F setting, not sure what temp it actually is (guessing 175 or so), but I use that on wood after spraying it down for an hour when I need to disinfect wood.

If it smells even after extensive airing out, definitely toss it. I had some cork bark we accidentally left in the oven when we preheated for 10 or 15 minutes to a cooking temperature, but the smokey smell aired out in a week or so just left on the couner. Once it smelled normal up close, we went ahead and used it; slightly darker appearance was the only evidence of that mistake.

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[Bodie]

I baked all my cork hides I have after every major cage cleaning. I do it at 200 for an hour. Every bag of new substrate I get, i will bake it also. Probably a bit overboard, but i done it for years. Old habits are hard to break

[LostJuly4th]

I went ahead and tossed it. Sounds like I baked it way to hot. Definitely didn't wet it, I'll try that next time. Thanks for the info.