Well I would love to get into this but I have only used aspine other then the stuff I use now.. We have a custom cut shaving that is pine. It's heat treated " NO OILS " and has just a very small amount of dust. LSU here in louisiana uses it for their rattery. The place they get it from is only about 5 mins away from our shelter. We are able to buy it from them along with all our feed. We use Lab Diet along with a custom blended mix. You have to know the reason we use this type of shavings, is we change our cages out every few days and we have 24 cages. Most are 5' wide by 4' deep by 4' tall. It's a lot of work.. Any other type shaving or bedding would bankrupt us.. LOL.. We are houseing around 142 rodents right now. Anyone need some ? 6 left louisiana last saturday and went to new mexico with their new mommy.. How cool is that.