Young milksnakes get (or may get) pretty stressed though in large enclosures... Mine never showed herself in a 60x40 cm enclosure (when she was ~40cm in length), also moving under the substrate at all times. Maybe sometimes at night she popped up. Otherwise hiding forever.
For the time being I moved her into a 30x20cm with covered sides, back, and top, and she's much more happy. She stopped burrowing and using the hides and thermo regulates normally like the others. This is important because a scared milk will prefer safety over health and may fail to properly thermo regulate or hydrate. She will go back to a bigger enclosure when she reaches a good size for it, for the time being I don't want her to believe it's "not safe outside".
Milksnakes do not usually burrow btw, despite the many comments of people stating they "like it". They only do if they feel unsafe. Usually the case with small ones, they stress out a ton easily.
As for finding the poop. They like to move around the sides of the enclosure much more than through the middle. Likely you'll find most if not all poop around the edges. Since you're using aspen shavings, you can also fairly easily replace it every month or so. It's not too expensive. A little snake in that much substrate isn't likely to make too much of a mess in 1 month that it becomes unhealthy
Just take care of the humidity in there, aspen tends to make stuff very dry, especially in winter months (depending on where you are of course, but for me when using aspen my humidity drops to 20%-ish, which is too low for me... I don't use it for that reason).
Hybrid Mode
