I’m an aide for a teacher I had for Small Animal Care, a class that my school offers. I was listening to part of the lecture today and she began talking about bedding. She said, “Absolutely do NOT use cedar chips. But folks, pine shavings are the BEST bedding for small animals.” I don’t know how to tell her that she’s wrong (pine shavings have the same dust and such that causes respiratory in small animals such as rats). What should I say, or should I just not say anything? Thanks! 🙂
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knowing a little about essential oil production, heat treatment won’t remove the phenols.
pine and cedar are not suitable for animal substrate. aspen is safe (but often has irritating levels of dust) as it is a hardwood, and does not contain phenols.
a search on the internet should easily bring up some studies to reference. if they criticise you, just point out that there are so many good and safe alternatives out there, no matter how small the risk, what kind of a person would you be to chance it.
The reason both aren’t safe is because both are soft woods. Soft woods emit oils called pheonals, which build up in lung tissue and cause deterioration (and thus respiratory infections, pneumonia, etc). Very painful and a slow killer (so you won’t notice its effects right away, many not for years! Softwoods are dangerous for anyone to be constantly around. Factory workers that handle these types of wood every day wear breathing gear and are susceptible to the same lung tissue degeneration. If you did a little research, I’m sure you could come up with some scientific articles supporting this claim (that’s where I learned this from).
Having said that, there is something called kiln dried pine, which some people feel is safe. Apparently it dries out said oils, rendering the savings as save as a hardwood like aspen. I don’t know much about how true that is, in my opinion, it’s best to just avoid pine all together. But yes, all wood shavings are generally dusty, which causes the same respiratory problems.
Don’t sit by and do nothing! The least you can do is read up on this yourself, and send her a polite email or tell her in person, referring her to your sources.
I know that this is not what you want to hear but you don’t tell her she is wrong because she isn’t! She is correct about both pine and ceder.
Pine and/or aspen shavings which are kiln dried and relatively low in dust are perfectly fine, safe and economical bedding, at least for guinea pigs and rabbits both of which I have raised for over 40 years on wood shavings. It is volatile oils in the ceder that is the problem. Dusty bedding of any kind, pine, aspen, care fresh is a problem. That is why you use pine or aspen shavings/chips rather than saw dust which is way too dusty.
The problem on the web is there is so much so called information repeated over and over that is either an exaggeration or simply not true.
Source(s): 40+ years raising and showing guinea pigs and rabbits and a PhD in Biology