• If you find that your dragon is kicking food into the dish of food, try putting the dish more into the middle of the enclosure or finding something deeper.  This may decrease the contamination of the food.  Contaminated food (feces, dead insects, dried up leftovers, bedding substrate, etc) should be removed and replaced immediately.

• Many intestinal impactions that occur in reptiles are often not from the food they eat, but instead the bedding substrate they are housed on. 

NOTE:  Although the packaging for Calci-Sand and other similar products suggest that the product may be digestible, they are not digestible and instead are major contributors to gut impactions in captive lizards.

Notice the pile of walnut shell bedding substrate in the upper right hand corner of this image, which was removed from the intestinal tract of this Bearded Dragon during the post-mortem autopsy.

Photo provided by Kristin King @ Eau Gallie HS.

Please visit www.mrskingsbioweb.com for more dissection photos.

Due to the risk of impaction with most bedding substrates available in the pet industry, Kricket's Kritters sought an alternative bedding substrate that would be less of a risk, be aesthetically pleasing, and natural.

Kricket's Kritters chose Certified-Organic Millet:

Millet can mold, however as long as your enclosure is dry enough it won't mold.

Kricket's Kritters recommends not using a water dish in the enclosure (which can cause respiratory infections anyway), to restrict daily mistings/sprays to just the dragon (not the entire enclosure), and to do water feedings using a baby medicine dropper by dripping directly on the dragons nose.

Two inches of millet in the bottom of the enclosure is plenty.

Make sure that you scoop the enclosure daily so that bacteria doesn't spread.

You can use a kitty litter scooper to scoop feces from millet.

Are there are differences between using bird seed millet vs. certified-organic millet?   YES!

The first difference is that birdseed millet still has the hull on it which makes it less absorbent and also harder for the dragons to digest.

Another difference is the way that it is grown, processed, and chemically treated.

Birdseed millet is sometimes grown from genetically modified seeds, treated with pesticides and insecticides sufficient tests have not been conducted to know the full effects of these chemicals.

In addition, birdseed millet is often treated with antibiotics meant for birds, not reptiles, and who knows what they've added since bird flu became an issue around the world.

Below are some benefits of using Certified-Organic Millet:

* Not treated with any chemicals (no pesticides or herbicides), hormones, or other chemicals

* Not genetically modified

* Not dusty (compared to walnut shells and most sands)

* Digestible

* Biodegradable

* Adheres to fecal matter

* Scoopable

* Passable - Millet is round, it doesn't have sharp edges and doesn't tend to interlock like sand and walnut shells do in the intestinal tract.

NOTE:  If you are looking for Certified-Organic Millet in your area, I would recommend contacting your local food market (not a large chain store) that offers a bulk food section.  Often they will special order you a25 or 50 pound bag, you might even receive a discount for buying in bulk!