Substrate and Feeding

[AndrewGeibel]

For those of you guys who use cyprus or I guess any type of mulch, do you feed in a separate container to avoid accidental ingestion of the wood chips? I have been using astro turf on the bottom of my cage but in this last shed, my little guy had a lot of trouble getting everything off and it wasn't in one piece. So today I went to go find a substrate that would hold more humidity and got a high quality hygrometer.

[AndrewGeibel]

anybody have any input?

[Skiploder]

I use aspen. The manufacturer even states not to feed on the substrate - however......................

This debate has been covered several times on the various forums and would take hours to read through all the threads. In the end, you still would not have a consensual answer to your question.

I feed all of our solitary snakes in the cage, but usually offer the prey over a slab of slate. All of our pairs are fed in separate containers with no substrate.

It has been argued that impactions could occur if the animal ingested substrate with its food. It's also been argued that it really isn't an issue.

FWIW, I asked our vet who does most of the herp doctoring in our neck of the woods about it and he said in 18 years of practice, he has only seen one case of impaction and it was a large amount of mulch in a very small/young snake.