Good, cheap substrate I'm trying out

I was at the feed store today and happened to see a stack of sacks of 'Stall Dry', a bedding for horses. The pellets are approx. 1/2" long, and made of 100% compressed pine. (Not cedar).

I like the feel of granular bedding more than flaked like shredded aspen, so I took some home and it looks real good in the cages. It is touted as being very absorbent, but we shall see.

By the way, I saw similar pelleted wood products at Petco for small animals and they were hi dollar, this stuff was about six bucks for 35 lbs.

Hopefully, it will work out well.

Cool, hope it works well for you.

Hm, I've seen that stuff before and I guess I'd never thought about using it as a substrate....I'm very curious to see how it works for you!

there is another new thread 'aspen pellets' where someone reports poor results from a certain brand of wood pellets. Still it was worth a try, will let y'all know how this brand works out.

The only thing I can say is that I have had very poor fortune with the paper pellets when used as substrate. Tends to insulate the UTH too much, not letting any through for the use of my boas and ball pythons. Also, it really dried out the snakes, it was the only time i have EVER had problems with my reptiles shedding! And immediately after changing back to shredded cypress, no more shedding probs.... I did try some wood pellets one time, a few years ago, in my kingsnake enclosures. But after about 3 months hey all seemed to start weezing. Probably from the fine, dry dust caused by their burrowing in it. Changed them to cypress mulch and they cleared right up! Just my experiences. Hope all goes well for you. Let us know what you find out.

So far, I would give wood pellets about a 6, 10 being best, which isn't too bad. The pellets do tend to disintegrate when wet, which means for water dish overflows there is an area of sawdust.

There is another experiment waiting in the wings, a mixture. There is a new granular bedding called Papurr, and I will mix that with ground corn cob bedding. Because the Papurr is so absorbent, it may fix the complaint that some folks have with corn cob which is that it molds when there is a lot of water and the substrate gets soaked.