How do you serve your hay?

[robindabney]

Do you use a wheel or hay loft, or do you just put a handful in the bottom of the cage? I read somewhere that it should be put in a holder due to keeping it clean, but my girls love to crawl around in their hay. Also, how long do you keep hay in the cage before throwing it out and putting in fresh? When they hear the bag crinkle they get so excited!

[Haley0489]

I plop a big pile in the middle or corner of the cage. I thought about getting a hay ball or making a rack, but my boys just LOVE to run under it. If I "rain" the hay down on them they go into a popcorning frenzy. Too cute to do try anything else!

Milo and Norbert have also realized their true destiny...becoming gophers!

[FoolOnTheHill]

I have a cat litter box which I line with newspaper and hay, I change it every day. My pigs always liked to burrow round in it and lie down to have a munch.

[i-love-nev]

My pigs have one half of the cage where they always get food and they have a pile of hay there everyday.

Edit - I dont see the point in hay racks, haha.

[Ly&Pigs]

It's more personal preference. If you do put piles in the cage, remove old hay about every other day to keep it from molding due to being pee'd on. I give my girls hay both in racks and on the cage floor.

[auburnmare5]

I used to put it on the cage floor, and Coco made an absolute mess. I bought a suet Bird Feeder for 0.89 at Christmas Tree Shops. I Highly Recommed It!

[ali's_pigs123]

You can use a bent grid to feed hay. Make sure that they cannot jump in it and possibly get their feet stuck in the holes.

[Justin]

2x2 area of the cage is covered with 2" pine and 2" hay, that I change weekly. I also have a large hay box attached from the outside wall of the cage.

Pigs eat hay from bedding during half of the week. They turn to the hay box when the bedding gets soiled.

[mochaviolino]

My two sows have a 1x2 hay bin (once was a loft). I usually line the bottom with newspaper and a sprinkle of bedding, then fill it up with hay. They absolutely love it and often sleep in there. Three fresh handfuls are added the following day and the entire thing is replaced every other day.

[camende]

I have metal cone shaped hayrack...it was actually the outside of a bathroom garbage can that I got from Linens N THings....

The girls love eating out of their hayrack...they do pull alot out and spread it around....but, they all line up and eat when I fill it...My Ally will move one of the pigloos over and then jump on top of it...she loves the hay on top...it's pretty cute...Ally will be on the top of the pigloo eating hay and Mollie will be IN the pigloo eating hay....

[Jenni_Feathers]

I have a 2x2 'hayloft' and it has 2 bent grid hayracks, but I keep them really full, so the hay sorta hangs over the center or it. I also cover the cage in hay sometimes, I pretty much take a huge box full and throw it in piles everywhere around the cage. It makes a huge mess and its really hard to get off of the fleece but they love it, and so it is worth the mess.

[paulammoore]

I use a bent wire grid, which keeps it up and clean and makes it easy to see when they are getting low or out. Some of my pigs like sitting up in the hay (crawling through it) and I never bend the grids so much that they can't fit in there.

[Toadies]

I used to use hay racks and tried several types. Now I just get a clean (I'm careful as to what was in it originally) cardboard box, about 10"-12" square, cut a low entrance and fill it with hay. My "kids" love it and it is so easy to pick up and pitch when it needs changing.

[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!

[julsie]

I use an old dishrack. When I'm rummaging in the hay box, Kyle gets all excited and runs to stand under the rack, so all the small pieces rain down on top of him. He pulls a lot of it out to make a nice carpet all over his cage, but he so rarely eats hay off the floor that I figure it's important to keep serving it in the rack. He seems happy with the arrangement!