Rat Bedding - Page 2

Syst3m · 11-06-03, 01:21 PM

Ok I just wanted to chime in on this.

First, cheapest place. Depends on what kind of bedding you want to use. Personally I recommend news paper. That is also probably the cheapest. Shredded is the best.

As far as pine controlling odor. Pine is bad So are all other Conifers (spelling?) Its bad for snakes its bad for rats. If your using pine to keep down the smell for rats wich don't really smell bad at all, (they aren't like mice) then your not changing your bedding often enough. If your letting ammonia levels get so bad in your rats cage that you you smell it then your doing something wrong. Feeding your snakes rats or mice raised in pine or cedar can be potentially harmful to your snakes.

There is a reason labs do not use pine or cedar, it causes illness and cancer.

P.S. Zoe only the bit about the new print being cheap is for you, the rest of the stuff about keeping your rats and mice in pine is for everyone else who thinks that its a good idea.

If you are going to use pine anyways, wal-mart should have a hell of a deal on it.

BoAddict · 11-06-03, 02:59 PM

just for the record shredders are pretty cheap if you look around i paid $45 for mine after tax and im sure i coulda found 1 cheaper if i shopped around

Jayson · 11-06-03, 03:14 PM

Syst3m Unless you are actually raising your own rats, they have likly been raised on pine. Reason being, running rats on newspaper is triple the work for the same money. When I was using newspaper the bins had to be cleaned every 1-2 days.
On pine I can go about 4 days. Also smell was not the issue, the problem was newspaper is not absorbant enough. When I made the switch productvity never changed and i have females well into their second year producing and males close to three. It does not look like any health problems to me.

Syst3m · 11-06-03, 06:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jayson
Syst3m Unless you are actually raising your own rats, they have likly been raised on pine. Reason being, running rats on newspaper is triple the work for the same money. When I was using newspaper the bins had to be cleaned every 1-2 days.
On pine I can go about 4 days. Also smell was not the issue, the problem was newspaper is not absorbant enough. When I made the switch productvity never changed and i have females well into their second year producing and males close to three. It does not look like any health problems to me.

1. News paper is just as or more absorbent then pine shavings. Perhaps it was not shreaded the right way.

2. I never said anything about not producing litters, its toxic to the animals. They will die a lot faster when kept in pine and will also have more respritory/health problems then rats kept on a bedding that is not toxic. If you breed snakes that are prone to health problem at birth (like the GTP) I can't see it as a good idea to feed them animals kept in something that is toxic to both the feeders and snakes. It is a proven FACT that pine and cedar (all conifers for that matter) are hazardous to mice/rats health.

3. I know that almost all store bought rats and mice are raised in pine, unfortunatly I do not have the time myself to raise my own rats and mice or I would. Beleive me I would be raising my own snake food right now if I had the time.

Linds · 11-06-03, 10:18 PM

As Jayson mentioned, saw mills are a great spot to score free shavings. They can be on the dusty side however.

I don't know how close any of them would be for you, but co-ops have great deals on all sorts of substrates. Pine is $4 for a 3.5 cubic foot compressed bag. You can get a large bag of hemp bedding which I found sort of interesting when I was looking at it. It was a big bag for $10. Most sell aspen as well.

Quote:

Originally posted by Jayson
Also smell was not the issue, the problem was newspaper is not absorbant enough.

I have to agree. I've used newspaper before and that didn't alst long. It was the messiest substrate I've used to date. None of the other substrates ever had problems such as crap stuck to the bottom of the tubs and whatnot. Even cleaning much more often, they still got 10x dirtier than any other substrates allowed.

mykee · 11-06-03, 11:25 PM

I'd have to agree that pine is WAY more absorbent than newspaper. Just think about it. As for odour control, pine is also much better. Also, someone mentioned that 'rats don't live as long' on pine as they do on other bedding. Question: These are feeders we're talking about, right? What's the lifespan of a feeder? anywhere from a day to maybe 3 months? I'm guessing life expenctancy isn't going to be an issue.

Slannesh · 11-06-03, 11:49 PM

I think the primary concern with keeping Rats on Pine is that it's the oils in Pine and Cedar that are toxic to reptiles. By keeping your feeders on pine shavings you're exposing your reptiles to it as well.

Now I have no clue if it's in amounts that could eventually be toxic to the reptiles but it's definately something worth at least a second thought.

Syst3m · 11-07-03, 09:28 AM

I think slannesh is looking at it the right way.
As far as how long your feeders live, I'm talking about the quality of life for your feeders.

If you want to know how much longer your rats and mice might live if they aren't kept on pine, talk to some fancy rat breeders who can attest to doubling the life of their pets after becomming aware of the toxic properties that pine and cedar pose to the pets.

If you don't care about the quality of life for your feeders, then how much do you care about the quality of life for your reptiles.

Let me state this one more time. PINE AND CEDAR are both toxic to reptiles and rodents. But hey by the logic that it smells better and last longer, then maybe we should go back to painting houses with lead paint. Hell it looks better and last longer.

Jayson · 11-07-03, 01:13 PM

Show me a long term captive reptile that has or had illness that was directly related to feeding it feeders raised on PINE.
I have been in this hobby for over ten years and never heard of such a thing.
however I have heard of snakes getting bowel impaction by almost every brand of bedding out there

Syst3m · 11-07-03, 04:57 PM

So I'm editing this to retract my last statement.

all I have to say is if ever decide to make an investment in snakes I hope you start looking at this in a manner that benifits you.

I would hate to see anyone invest in a snake or snakes of value only to lose them because they didn't realize that the baby snakes system couldn't handle a mouse thats system is toxified by pine oil and covered in it also.

I'm not telling you guys to change the way you do things I'm just giving you something else to thing about.

Slannesh · 11-07-03, 08:20 PM

Jayson: What you're asking is likely very difficult if not impossible to trace.

First off, most people who have small collections don't bother to raise their own rodents and have little to no idea what they were raised on.

I said it was a concern and something to think about not "This will 100% certainly kill you snake in a year"

Do what you want with your snakes, I was just pointing out something that could be a concern. Then again it could be nothing at all. But it makes sense to me that since the oils in conifers are known to be toxic that a snake being fed rodents raised on the stuff is being exposed to it. Now this likely isn't nearly as bad as being kept on the shavings itself, but it's entirely possible that a lot of generic health problems that snakes commonly have could, at least in part, be contributed to being fed prey that has these oils on them.

Bearded AL · 11-07-03, 08:33 PM

I myself use aspen as a substrate but know a few breeders that use pine either or its up to the person but I found Zehrs to be pretty cheap aswell just my 2 cents

Lisa · 11-08-03, 04:31 PM

we've tried shreded newspaper, unshreded news paper and various wood shavings.

any soft wood is going to give your feeders resp issues. as for shredders, we got ours on sale from canadian tire. $19 with out the special bucket the cashier tried to tell us would make the unit shed better (WTH?). we've tried pine and aspen and the rodents make a mess with it and i find it sticks to the cage bottoms and is harder to clean then news paper. now the rodents still make a mess with the shreded news paper seemed to be most absorbant for us. it might be that we use a lot of news paper (Lots and lots of news paper). you can get free newspaper all over the place, like the real estate news, careers and jobs, in toronto you have "eye", "now", "xtra" and a whole host of other freebies.

Jayson · 11-08-03, 09:59 PM

Slannesh You are right, it is likly very hard to get this info. But i myself am going to check deeper into this as a snake and rodent breeder. I have used shredded news paper before but with more then 500 rats at any one time it is just not economcal with 1hour a day spent just shreading the paper then having to clean almost every bin daily.

C.m.pyrrhus · 11-08-03, 10:26 PM

I myself use Aspen for my small rodent collony. I already use it for most my snakes, so I use it with rats as well. It holds up well for a cheap substrate.

Another question is, what do folks here use as rat food? I use dry dog food myself, something with some desent nurtient value and low fat. The manufactured rat food is basically expensive dog food anyhow, so I save a few bucks by buying the dog food.