Tortoise Substrate

"The next thing we're going to talk about is we have our tortoise. We've got our cage set up, the heating and everything necessary. We're going to talk about the substrate in our enclosure, which is a fancy, reptile term for the bedding. There's a couple of different kinds of beddings that we can use, and we're going to talk about. The two that I generally recommend is going to be either a like the Carefresh bedding, okay, or any recycled, compressed newspaper bedding. And this is perfectly safe. It's biodegradable. It's digestible if the animal happens to eat some of it. It is a little dusty, and it's not the most natural looking thing in the world, so as far as a display animal goes, it's not the best case and it can be a little pricey sometimes. But it is a good choice, and you can't go wrong with it. Secondly, what I personally use and recommend would be a large wood chip bedding. You want as big a wood chip as possible. We are looking at something preferably like a Douglas Fir bark, you want to stay away from pine, you want to stay away from cedar. Aspen is fine as well, though I don't recommend the shaving type bedding because it does tend to cause a little bit of problems and it tends to be a lot dustier. It's not nearly as natural looking. Now, you're not going to hear me say this often, but with a tortoise, there's one bedding that I absolutely do not recommend, and that would be any of the cocoa shredded beddings. And that's simply because these have a tendency to get caught in the eyes of the tortoise because of how the eyes are formed and shaped. So personally, I would stay away from this bedding for this particular reptile. It is generally my go-to bedding for most other reptiles, but this guy from this particular, we would stay away from."