Bedding decision?

Is aspen shavings ok to use for a garter snake? what would be the best to use?

 

aspen shavings are fine, altho you have to be careful feeding your snakes on aspen. The shavings can stick to the prey item and be accidently ingested, possibly causing an impaction...Easy to spot clean and smells nice too, plus most snakes like to burrow into it if it's deep enough...

 

you're not supposed to feed snakes in their cages anyway, so the substrate won't be a problem. aspen is a good choice and so is cypress but do NOT use cedar or pine. Feeding Snakes (click here!)

 

Do I have to use the Feeding Thing? cant I just throw it in a pinky there with the snake?

 

if you throw them in the cage, after awhile your snake will think your arm going in to the cage is food. It is instinct to bite at whatever they think is food.

 

Yes use the feeding thing. Garters are not the tamest of colubrids, in my opinion, make you life easier and just do it. You don't have to buy those particular tongs. Go to walmart and get some kitchen tongs. Anything to help your snake tell the difference between your arm and the food. Think about what he sees, warmth. He can smell food and since it is dead it doesn't give off a heart beat or any heat, but the heat of you hand does. It gets used to the tank opening and something warm that smells like food. Pretty soon he will anticipate that and strike your hand. PLus if you have bedding you don't want him to swallow any and get an impaction that can kill him.

 

i do not agree, i feed all my snakes in their tanks (dead prey items) and i just place the food in the tank in various places with no ill effects, my general rule of thumb is that there should only be 2 things that move in the enclosure the snake and you - this means no wiggleing of prey items if they are pre killed. i have never been bit and they all have excellent temprements

 

just because you have never had a problem doing it the wrong way does NOT mean that what you do is safe and it does NOT mean that you won't have a problem in the future. feeding in a seperate enclosure is the right way to do it.

and, like ucagt said - it would be wise to use the tongs, BUT you don't have to get the ones i have pictured there. there's a million different kinds PLUS you can even get kitchen tongs or something like that (which ucagt also mentioned). you have no idea how easy it is for a snake to mistake your hand for the food item (after all, you're hand is probably warmer) AND many snakes don't even that great of aim (ours always strike too far and endup grabbing the tongs before realizing they need to back up).

feed in a seperate enclosure and use some kind of tongs.

 

no, i have a seperate enclosure for feeding...
I'll look into getting some tongs

 

quote
"you're not supposed to feed snakes in their cages anyway"

I disagree with this somewhat, in the spirit of the "it's this way or your WRONG" attitude conveyed...The subject of separate feeding enclosures has been debated online for at least 3 years, and I'm sure longer than that, with no conclusions other than there are two lines of thought, the one conveyed by Hummingbird, and the opposite...I can say that from my experience feeding my snakes in their enclosures AND in feeding boxes is that, when I want to go and open a drawer on the rack and take a snake out, it DOES NOT REACT in any such way that it is considering my hand or arm food...Ever...And I feed them all in their enclosure's...Now, when it comes to feeding everyone on a ten shelf rack I start from the top down and perform an Open, Drop prey, Close, pretty quickly down the rack, because the top 4 snakes in the rack react quickly when they smell it's feeding time...I have 3 yearling boa's and an adult ball python in the top four shelfs; they are the most aggressive and with them being first their prey item is in the cage before they have a chance to get riled up; the smaller ball and corns below all eat at their leisure...I do agree that when you have the time with one or two snakes that a separate feeding enclosure makes sense; I just don't IMHO feel that feeding in the animals enclosure is "wrong"... & who's to say by being placed in a separate enclosure wont trigger an aggressive response in itself ...Handle your snakes enough and have them recognize you as not a threat and they won't mistake you for prey...JMHO and definately just giving another "spin" to an ongoing debate :*)

 

i have many snakes that pass through my home for one reason or other and i always feed in the enclosure, i do however place the prey at the opposite end of the enclosure to the snake which means the snake has to find the prey. by the time this happens my hands are long gone

 

I had an experience a few years ago that convinced me to use the 'seperate feeding' method. We had a Ball Python, about a year old or so, and used newspaper for lining the cage. Due to there being nothing that the snake could swallow, we fed it in it's cage. Just opened it up and dropped the mouse in. Well, one day, we opend the tank up, and I had the mouse in my hand as always. The Ball curled, and I dropped that mouse just in time. She caught it in mid air and had wrapped before she could hit the bottom of the tank. Scared the heck out of me, cause I've never been bitten by any type of snake. From that point on, we took her out and put her in a seperate enclosure to feed. It also seemed to make her more docile when we took her out to handle her. Before that she was always a bit 'jumpy' for the first ten minutes or so after we removed her.

Just a personal preference. I really got on this bandwagon when I saw some type of autopsy pics of a snake's stomach where it had swallowed a bit of the aspen and gotten an impaction. Was the last little bit of convincing I needed.



Brian

 

cka and suzy - like i said before, just because YOU have not had a bad experience doing it that way does *not* mean that it is the proper way to do it and just because YOUR snakes seem docile does *not* mean that you should feed them in their cages and it certainly does not mean that you should encourage others to feed in the cage. we need to be encouraging people to do things the safest way possible if at all possible. and when you say "well i don't do it the safest possible way and my animals are fine" it gives others the impression that
A) it's okay to do things in less-than-the-safest-possible-way
it's okay to do things however you want even when safer ways are suggested and possible
C) the people on reptile rooms don't always do things the way others say are the safest, so the advice they give must be wrong or incompletely true

a bad message to give, in my opinion. so when someone says that there is a best and/or safest way to do something please at least consider doing it that way AND please don't encourage others to do things the way that is NOT the safest.

p.s. feeding a snake in a seperate enclosure almost insures that the animal will not strike at anything until it is in the bucket/cage/rubbermaid with the lid on because that is what they get used to - no food until in the bucket with the lid on - every time. they are very quick learners. however, they are also quick to learn that (if you feed in the cage) when the cage door opens a food item is likely to enter. if you always feed in a seperate enclosure, the snake will know that it never gets food when the door is opened so it won't bother striking. so there is a FAR greater chance that a snake (or any animal) will bite you if you feed in the cage than in a seperate enclosure with a secure lid. it's all about behavioral conditioning. and i already went into the chance of impactions or infections or other problems associated with swallowing things that shouldn't be swallowed (which only happens in the cage).
there are many things that are debatable in the herp world, like you say, but this shouldn't be one of them (except in rare cases) and it rarely is.

 

snakes are intelligent and some species may strike quicker than others, i didnt say my way was the right way!!!! it just works for me at the end of the dayits personal choice and if i get bit then i may change my methods. i was not saying feeding in a seperate enclosure was the wrong way either!!!!!! and after all this post was about substrata!!!!!!!!!! :?

 

I bought aspen shavings

 

I am going to share my .02 on this one.....
I believe that where you feed your snake is up to you. Unless you have the snake on loose substrate, then it is safest and strongly recommended that you feed the snake in a separate enclosure. This will reduce the risk of your snake ingesting substrate. The reason we encourage separate enclosures for feeing is because it is thought that a snake will learn to associate your hand and human interaction as feeding time. With regular handling in between feedings I feel this can be avoided. Snakes are wild animals though. No matter how much we anthropomorphize they are and always will be creatures that operate on instinct. That instinct can be "tweaked" somwhat when we frequently interact with our snakes so that they associate our hands as a neutral object and possibly even something safe. With that being said there are always exceptions to the "rule". Some snakes no matter what is done will always be aggressive and others will always remain somewhat docile.
Here is the personal experience that has lead me to come to this conclusion......
We have had two dumerils that were a very big challenge for us. One was a live feeder from birth until I obtained it after two years, the other a baby that was given to me as a non-feeder. I spent several months trying EVERYTHING to get the baby to eat, in cage, out of cage, loose substrate, paper substrate, you name it.... the problem was I was trying to follow the rules. Finally what got it to start eating was no handling, loose bark type substrate so it could burrow, and live mice. Thats right I broke EVERY rule out there to get him going. Now a year later he is eating frozen thawed but will only eat in his cage. He is no more aggresive than any of our other snakes.
The female that had only been fed live started the same way. I tried tubs and f/t with no luck and resorted to in cage live feedings to get her going. After several weeks of live she is also now converted to f/t and will only eat in the cage. She is one of the sweetest snakes we have. A third snake, a hog island boa, has always been fed in a separate enclosure. She is pretty docile, but displays the typical HI hissiness when you first try to get her out of the cage. (This part could be debated heavily on other sites ) I got lazy and fed her two weeks in a row in her cage. After the first feeding in her cage she started to strike at anything that moved around her cage. She was fine once she was removed from the cage though. To experiement I have gone back to feeding her out of her cage and sure enough with three weeks of separate enclosure feeding she has stopped striking the sides of her cage unless really provoked.
I have another HI that showed no differences whether it was fed in the cage or in a separate enclosure. My personal "experiments" are limited, only 4 snakes, but led me to the conclusion that as long as the snake is being cared for properly that where you feed is up to you.
It is my personal opinion that how the snake reacts to feedings in the cage depends on the individual snake. I will however continue to recommend that people feed a snake in a separate enclosure and I will continue to feed the majority of my snakes in a separate enclosure. I will also continue to tell people that it is wrong to feed a snake on loose substrate. I just have to remind myself before giving out information that what works for one person doesn't always work for others. Also sometimes our wild "pets" will dictate how and where they eat and force us to break the rules that we try to set on them.
The bottom line is this, do what works for you and your snake as long as the best interests of your snake are kept in mind.

 

and i never said that you did any of that. all i said was that by posting that you didn't do it the safest way and you had no problems doing that way, that you were (purposely or not) encouraging others to do it that way as well. when someone (*anyone*) recommends that people do something the safest way, one of the worst things (in my opinion) you can do is get on and say "well i don't do it that way and i don't have problems". that completely defeats the purpose of suggesting the safe way to do it.

like you said, this thread was about substrate and rabble got what he needed, so there's no need for further discussion. just please be aware that everything you say has an effect on others whether you mean it to or not.

 

well stormyva i read your comment closely several times and i agree with you entirely my way may not be the accepted way but it works for me, and i always place the food item ontop of the slate hide (no loose substrata to contend with) or on top of the wood hide at the opposite end (again no loose substrata to contend With) cheers we somthing every day and hopefully while doing this increase our knowledge, just as a quickie away from the subject i just returned from an International Herpetological monthly meeting where i met a rat snake that was 27 years of age, it has always been fed in its enclosure although now after feeding on the same day of the week for 27 years it has to be fed by tongs because it knows exactly when food is going to be offered and strikes straight away

 

didnt axe close this thread?

 

it was re-opened momentarily to allow further elaboration.

all snakes should be fed using tongs anyway whether they've ever bitten or not.