RE: Newpaper toxic to Degu's?

Ems — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 13:37:40 GMT

Thanks for your post Sal, yeah that's what I thought. In the end I just asked him to use some plain A4 paper until he got to us. I'll try and have a better look but that one certainly caught me off guard!

RE: Newpaper toxic to Degu's?

Sal the 1st — Sat, 20 Jun 2015 07:56:28 GMT

This one was doing the rounds back in 2005 when I was working in a practice whose main client base was rabbits, chinchillas and the like (including degus). As you say conflicting information with some citing the chemicals in the paper production and some people the chemicals in the ink. I never came across a paper impaction which some people worry about but did see impactions from fluffy bedding which many people were recommending at the time. When we looked around we found that the toxic newspaper story seemed to come from just one or two posts on one of the pet forums which as you know these stories seem to sprout legs and run for miles. We didn't find any veterinary links at all - perhaps there are some now?

At the practice we did use a layer of newspaper based on the information that most printing ink for newspapers is soya based these days rather than having a petroleum solvent and that the amount of heavy metals in the ink are heavily regulated. paper from magazines however is a different story and shouldn't be used