Pine shavings.

[broadude]

before aspen........there was pine.

i would use pine......(if i had to..............if i had to)

i would not use cedar for nothing.....

now i solely use coco coir......nothing else!

Pitoon

(to the bolded) ....and probably a lot of unexplained deaths too. Back then snakes weren't high on the necropsy lists. It is only recently with the rash of scammers/flippers selling sick snakes that necropsy has become more of a household word (imo).

Who's to say what those snakes perished of "before aspen?"

[BabysMomma]

For me, it's not whether or not it's been proven, but the fact that it HASN'T been proven if it's safe or not. I am head over heels for my little guy, and if anything happened to him, I'd never forgive myself if there was even the tiniest possibility that it could have been my fault. I fully intend to have him with me when we're both senior citizens. So, until I know it's not going to hurt him, I'm going to use something that I know won't hurt him by itself. Just because something happens in the wild, doesn't mean we should make it happen in captivity.

[bad-one]

I've used kiln dried pine for my feeders before with no ill effects. I prefer using newspaper for snakes.

[snakesRkewl]

I've used kiln dried pine for my feeders before with no ill effects. I prefer using newspaper for snakes.

I have several friends who use kiln dried pine under their rats.
Every single rat they own sneezes.....

[Mike Schultz]

When I was younger I caught a couple garter snakes and put them in a glass aquarium on pine shavings.

The next day they were twitching uncontrollably and I was so horrified I released them back into the field where I found them.

I have no idea what may have caused this. The only thing I can think of was there was something toxic in their enclosure. Was it the pine? That's all that was in there besides a water bowl.

[BPelizabeth]

Yea I had a pet shop tell me it was ok to use a UTH without a thermostat. Oh ...that's not needed. What the........

Thank goodness I found this site as a newbie or my babies would be all kinds of jacked up!!

[blackcrystal22]

I have several friends who use kiln dried pine under their rats.
Every single rat they own sneezes.....

I've used pine for my rats.
No sneezing. Just because they had a batch of sick animals doesn't mean that it was the pine that caused it. Maybe even then, they got a bad brand that wasn't completely kiln dried. I prefer Aspen or Cypress or Paper Towels for my snakes, and because pine could have ill-effects on snakes if it wasn't completely kiln dried, I won't use it.

But on the rats, I've never seen them sneeze from it anymore than they sneeze from aspen bedding.

[WingedWolfPsion]

Rats all have myco--anything can set it off. Introducing new animals, or anything else that might stress them, is probably the biggest factor. Really dusty bedding will make anyone sneeze, but I have noticed no change in switching from aspen to pine.
As long as the room is well ventilated, it's fine.

The rats are more at risk from ammonia build-up if their bedding isn't changed often enough than they are from anything released by pine.

[snakesRkewl]

All valid points and if it works for you then who am I to refute it

I have seen too many people who use kiln dried pine and had respiratory issues
so I chose and continue to choose to use aspen and incur the added expense.

I breed for pets also, I can't/won't take chances with $15 rats sneezing before they go to their new homes since I give 30 day health guarantees on all my pet rats.

Your completely correct as to their ammonia build up being the biggest cause of respiratory issues,
clean tubs goes a long way towards keeping them healthy.

[blackcrystal22]

All valid points and if it works for you then who am I to refute it

I have seen too many people who use kiln dried pine and had respiratory issues
so I chose and continue to choose to use aspen and incur the added expense.

I breed for pets also, I can't/won't take chances with $15 rats sneezing before they go to their new homes since I give 30 day health guarantees on all my pet rats.

Your completely correct as to their ammonia build up being the biggest cause of respiratory issues,
clean tubs goes a long way towards keeping them healthy.

You are very correct. We can't really tell what the health problems are caused by, but I think it's also possible that people go longer without cleaning cages with pine because it holds the smell better than aspen, from my experience anyway.
So the correlation of respiratory issues with rats could be more related to the cage cleaning frequency than the bedding itself.