Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
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.