[soccermama]

I've tried construction various hay racks from hanging bent grids, to a CD holder, all sorts of kinds. BUT-- when it comes down to it, kiddos are so much happier standing, laying, digging, crawling under, etc. the hay. Just when i think "oh THIS is the hayrack i'll use" i ALWAYS go back to just putting a pile on the floor (fleece.)

Every single morning, first thing I do is clean up the cage, which means moving their leftover hay around and getting all the poo/pee pieces and hunks of hay out. I also do an "under clean" as i call it which is merely scooping up all the broken tidbits of hay at the bottom of the leftover hay pile. I do this to keep the "dust" down as i'm allergic to the Timothy hay but have found keeping up on this helps a lot!

Then i remove all the rest of the poos from the cage. Then a good fluffing of the leftover hay (which we affectionately call "nesting hay" which is really just hay they've chosen not to eat for whatver reason) and then with a big noisy production (of the bag of hay) i stick in two big handfuls on either side of the "nesting hay."

This is usually repeated around dinner time, too (twice a day.)

DOing this, I've found that the "nesting hay" gets used for fun, and gets removed/replenished with each cleaning and addition of new hay. Of course, each time the fleece is CHANGED, ALL the current hay gets removed and completely new stuff is put in.

I've given up on trying to keep the cage (2x5) neat and tidy from hay pieces. Guinea pig happiness is much more important, and having free piles of hay is just the thing!