ChristinaM
12-28-03, 01:59 PM
I'm hoping to make this an excellent debate thread as to the why's, why nots, pro's, cons, etc. to both these products( all in one thread too) . These following statements are taken from this ( http://www.ssnakess.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32927 ) thread.
Big Mike: "Sand is not a safe substrate for beardies. Why would you want to use something that will slowly kill your animal?"
" Just because beardies kept on sand are not dead yet, or even showing signs of ill health, does not mean that it is safe for them. I don't want to come off as argumentative but how long have been keeping beardies on sand? Typically, captive beardies on sand do not live longer than 5-7 years. I have heard of beardies living three times that long.
Also, Australia is not all an arid desert covered in play sand. If beardies were really from regions with nothing but sand...they would have developed a way to let sand pass through their bodys...unfortuantly they have not.
I personally don't care if people want to keep their beardies on sand but at least give caution to beginners who ask questions about it."
CDN Coldblood: "
Play sand is a good substrate for beardeds! A healthy dragon will pass sand very easily. If sand is impacting the digestive tract of a dragon, there's probably more serious problems with the health of the dragon such as dehydration. I would not advise beginners to do there research on the forums, because people state things that have really no merit, they are just opinions. Take what you read with a grain of salt. It's easy to say that "my dragon died of impaction" without really knowing the cause. It's a convenient answer.
Darren is right when he suggests that dragons in the wild ingest sand (not that they only come from sandy enviroments). They also ingest other larger debris, but amazingly they survive. What I'm saying is, if your dragon dies from sand impaction, that probably wasn't the main cause of it's death, but only the climactic end. If your dragon is cared for properly, sand will not kill it.
If you really want a good substrate for beardeds, try using a sandy soil, like most monitor breeders use for their australian animals. To use a substrate that is available in the pet trade such as calci-sand, or beda-beast is crazy. It's too expensive and has no real benefit, only commercial hype. Better yet, when researching, don't even look at reptile related sites, find geological studies that were taken from areas where beardeds live, that's the best info."
Quote from Eyespy in this link (http://www.ssnakess.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13234&highlight=Death+sand)
"I've heard that line from 1985 to present when somebody does finally get an animal that dies from impaction. Did you know there are 2 types of impaction? Acute is when a clump of sand blocks off the entire plumbing and sudden death occurs. But chronic impaction is the more insidious kind and can not be accurately diagnosed without slitting the bowel open. That is the type of impaction most commonly found with playsand.
This occurs when sand sticks to the wet walls of the intestines and forms a coating. The animal loses the ability to absorb nutrients through the affected areas and slowly starves to death. Sometimes the tissue underneath the sand dies off and the animal goes septic and dies suddenly. If there is no necrosis, it can take upwards of 3 years for death to occur.
Most vets, even in necropsy, blame this sort of death on parasites or failure to thrive and never slit the bowel open to see if there is a sand coating. It's a very highly underdiagnosed problem.
Nicola, in the wild they DO NOT live on loose sand. It's sand mixed with soil that bakes into a hard crust, not dunes like the beach or the Sahara. Australian beardie keepers use bricklayer's sand with a high clay content to simulate their natural environment, they never use fine grained sand as that coats the intestines too easily. Beardie keepers who do use sand are regularly fined by
Wet your hand and bury it in sand. Does the sand cling? Can you shake it off easily? Probably not. Then that's what's happening inside the beardie's gut. Intestines are not smooth like sausage casings. They have millions of villi, fingerlike projections which absorb nutrients. Picture a coral reef with lots of sea anemones. That's what the gut is like. Sand clings all over those structures.
I've spent countless hours in the OR holding 3 feet of dying small intestine while the surgeon tried to find enough healthy tissue to justify keeping chronic impacted beardies alive. Almost all of them end up being euthanized because there just isn't enough functioning bowel left.
I bought this 5 week old beardie from a breeder that uses washed playsand. Having seen what I have, my vet and I did a gastric lavage to flush out the intestines thorougly and the vial is full of sand, bile salts and other digestive chemicals that were removed from her. It was almost 20% of her body weight after just 5 short weeks of being on sand. She would have been dead inside of 5 years had we not removed the sand"
CDN Coldblood: "The point is that common subsrtates people conventionally use for dragon's won't kill them, there's many other captive husbandry issues that need to be addressed before we can blame the substrate.
Personally, I think that the best substrate for them would be a thick layer of packed sandy soil, sort of what I use with my monitors. I holds humidity well and will allow the dragons to burrow if they want, and beleive me they do, we just don't give them that option in captivity"
Bighead: " It might also be good to point out that dragons kept in captivity can live much longer lives than those in the wild if conditions are ideal. There hasn't been many necropsies done on wild beardies that I am aware of, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that some of them live shorter lives due to various degrees of impaction "
Big Mike: "Sand is not a safe substrate for beardies. Why would you want to use something that will slowly kill your animal?"
" Just because beardies kept on sand are not dead yet, or even showing signs of ill health, does not mean that it is safe for them. I don't want to come off as argumentative but how long have been keeping beardies on sand? Typically, captive beardies on sand do not live longer than 5-7 years. I have heard of beardies living three times that long.
Also, Australia is not all an arid desert covered in play sand. If beardies were really from regions with nothing but sand...they would have developed a way to let sand pass through their bodys...unfortuantly they have not.
I personally don't care if people want to keep their beardies on sand but at least give caution to beginners who ask questions about it."
CDN Coldblood: "
Play sand is a good substrate for beardeds! A healthy dragon will pass sand very easily. If sand is impacting the digestive tract of a dragon, there's probably more serious problems with the health of the dragon such as dehydration. I would not advise beginners to do there research on the forums, because people state things that have really no merit, they are just opinions. Take what you read with a grain of salt. It's easy to say that "my dragon died of impaction" without really knowing the cause. It's a convenient answer.
Darren is right when he suggests that dragons in the wild ingest sand (not that they only come from sandy enviroments). They also ingest other larger debris, but amazingly they survive. What I'm saying is, if your dragon dies from sand impaction, that probably wasn't the main cause of it's death, but only the climactic end. If your dragon is cared for properly, sand will not kill it.
If you really want a good substrate for beardeds, try using a sandy soil, like most monitor breeders use for their australian animals. To use a substrate that is available in the pet trade such as calci-sand, or beda-beast is crazy. It's too expensive and has no real benefit, only commercial hype. Better yet, when researching, don't even look at reptile related sites, find geological studies that were taken from areas where beardeds live, that's the best info."
Quote from Eyespy in this link (http://www.ssnakess.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13234&highlight=Death+sand)
"I've heard that line from 1985 to present when somebody does finally get an animal that dies from impaction. Did you know there are 2 types of impaction? Acute is when a clump of sand blocks off the entire plumbing and sudden death occurs. But chronic impaction is the more insidious kind and can not be accurately diagnosed without slitting the bowel open. That is the type of impaction most commonly found with playsand.
This occurs when sand sticks to the wet walls of the intestines and forms a coating. The animal loses the ability to absorb nutrients through the affected areas and slowly starves to death. Sometimes the tissue underneath the sand dies off and the animal goes septic and dies suddenly. If there is no necrosis, it can take upwards of 3 years for death to occur.
Most vets, even in necropsy, blame this sort of death on parasites or failure to thrive and never slit the bowel open to see if there is a sand coating. It's a very highly underdiagnosed problem.
Nicola, in the wild they DO NOT live on loose sand. It's sand mixed with soil that bakes into a hard crust, not dunes like the beach or the Sahara. Australian beardie keepers use bricklayer's sand with a high clay content to simulate their natural environment, they never use fine grained sand as that coats the intestines too easily. Beardie keepers who do use sand are regularly fined by
Wet your hand and bury it in sand. Does the sand cling? Can you shake it off easily? Probably not. Then that's what's happening inside the beardie's gut. Intestines are not smooth like sausage casings. They have millions of villi, fingerlike projections which absorb nutrients. Picture a coral reef with lots of sea anemones. That's what the gut is like. Sand clings all over those structures.
I've spent countless hours in the OR holding 3 feet of dying small intestine while the surgeon tried to find enough healthy tissue to justify keeping chronic impacted beardies alive. Almost all of them end up being euthanized because there just isn't enough functioning bowel left.
I bought this 5 week old beardie from a breeder that uses washed playsand. Having seen what I have, my vet and I did a gastric lavage to flush out the intestines thorougly and the vial is full of sand, bile salts and other digestive chemicals that were removed from her. It was almost 20% of her body weight after just 5 short weeks of being on sand. She would have been dead inside of 5 years had we not removed the sand"
CDN Coldblood: "The point is that common subsrtates people conventionally use for dragon's won't kill them, there's many other captive husbandry issues that need to be addressed before we can blame the substrate.
Personally, I think that the best substrate for them would be a thick layer of packed sandy soil, sort of what I use with my monitors. I holds humidity well and will allow the dragons to burrow if they want, and beleive me they do, we just don't give them that option in captivity"
Bighead: " It might also be good to point out that dragons kept in captivity can live much longer lives than those in the wild if conditions are ideal. There hasn't been many necropsies done on wild beardies that I am aware of, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that some of them live shorter lives due to various degrees of impaction "