Pueblan Milk Snake Habitat Substrate Tips

Video Transcript

"Now there?s a lot of different substrates you can use for your snake. The best one I think is aspen shavings, they are readily available at any pet store or reptile supply store, they are very absorbent, and they don't create a lot of dust. One thing you always want to make sure especially when you are feeding your snake that they don't digest the substrate, and it can be kind of tricky with these shavings so you might want to remove your snake or feed him on a platform where he doesn't ingest any shavings. Some things you want to avoid are pine shavings which create a lot of dust, and it's not really all that bad for the snake but its bad for us humans, the dust when it escapes the cage, gets into our lungs, if you are asthmatic, or if you have breathing problems it can create some rather nasty situations. Also, cedar is something else you want to avoid, cedar shavings are readily available at a lot pet stores, you don't want to use them for reptiles because they have oils in them that can actually hurt the snake, or hurt the lizard or any other type reptile you're keeping them on, so avoid cedar shavings. Some other things people use besides aspen shavings is newspaper, newspaper works well, it needs to be cleaned a little bit more because you can't really spot clean newspaper you have to remove the entire thing. Also, if you use newspaper, avoid using colored newspaper because the newsprint can rub off and possibly harm your snake. Also, especially for these little guys the easiest thing I find to use is just paper towel. And since snakes don't eat that much, they only eat once every three days to three weeks depending on the age, you don't need to clean it up because they don't defecate that much. But, paper towels work very well especially for these smaller enclosures."