green wood?

[worldturns]

ok so I have just had my apple tree pruned and I kept the branches. so the wood is still green at the moment. I was planing to make a few bridges and runs out of them, toys for my Penny basically, not really sure what I am going to do just yet. but when I do decide what I will make if the wood is still green (as in there is still living whick) is it OK to use in hamster housing? I will obviously need to sterilise it some how as well any suggestions on how to do that?

[Pebbles82]

I think Cypher will know :-) She is good on woods.

[Hamsterita]

I don't know about the safety of using it if it's still green, but I know a little bit about sterilising things.... A lot of bugs are sensitive to temperatures above 60 degrees for periods of time around 30 min. To be on the safe side, I baked all my wood items at 100 degrees for 30 min, and I didn't have problems.Obviously, each item is different, so you should test a little piece first, but I successfully baked, without any problems, different wood and grass items (as bendy bridges, willow tunnels, wooden houses and even an Ikea Knuff).

If you don't have an oven, you could use a microwave, I think that a microwave should be better than an oven, but I find rather difficult to control the temperature in the microwave. For example, I had sterilized a rock on the oven with the method mentioned above without problems, but a couple of months later I needed to sterilized it again and I was in a hurry, so I used the microwave at 800W for 3 minutes and the rock "exploded" (it cracked in half due to the high temperature), so... be careful if you use the microwave!!

[Drago]

I agree with hamsterita, it should still be safe to use. Sterilize it if you'd like, or if you're super worried about it, you can just bin it. Overall, even if it's still hot living bits, it's all the same wood and should be fine once sterilized :)

[cypher]

The wood itself will be fine, I would either heat it in the oven as Hamsterita says or you can just put it in the freezer for a week, freezing isn't guaranteed to kill all the eggs that could be in but it will kill living bugs, I don't have a proper oven & so I just freeze things & everything has been fine with me. I'm too good at setting fire to things in the microwave I don't even try that way!
Once you've done that if you have some smaller twigs you can just give them to your ham to chew, all mine like apple sticks.

[Pebbles82]

Lol I'd be terrified putting it in the microwave - I'm too good at exploding things in it as well.

[worldturns]

ok so avoid using the microwave then lol. things exploding not good!

great tips there thank you all once again.

now comes the hard part ....deciding what to make!

[Drago]

ok so avoid using the microwave then lol. things exploding not good!

great tips there thank you all once again.

now comes the hard part ....deciding what to make!

Check out the DIY section of the forum! It's got lots of super cool projects and how to make them :)