aeiou
Well-known Member
Cavy Slave
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2013
- Posts
- 318
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2013
- Messages
- 318
I know there are a lot of people like me out on this forum, with thread after thread about what to do to keep the guinea pigs from making parents unhappy..so I thought I'd make this thread to share what I know after about a year of this fun ever going battle 
and also as sort of an idea board from other kids experiences and from parents to kind of give us the other perspective!
First I'll start with the system I worked out with my parents about smell, laundry, space, etc. Basically, the major dilemma has been smell. When I was younger, I broke my nose - well practically crushed the left side - leaving me with a pretty awful sense of smell, and that combined with the fact that I keep the trio in my room so I sorta get used to the smell, I really can't smell it unless its pretty bad. However, my parents have really good noses, so I've learned to just always pretend it smells, in order to make it never smell. I started this whole trip with one guinea pig in a pet store cage, with carefresh. Changed bedding once a week; no smell. But once I found the c&c cages and found out that they shouldn't live alone, I convinced my parents to get another one, but when we went to the pet store (bad idea- we ended up with a trio of URI pigs) we ended up getting two. So we moved them all to a 2x5 c&c with carefresh. then I found this site, and fleece, so we switched to fleece, which was nice at first because the carefresh cost was gone. But the smell problem began.
So after about 8 months, I've finally hit the arrangement that works for me.
1) more space is a life saver. Upgraded to a 3x6, and the smell level dropped dramatically.
2) my cage is set up like this:
I'm still using the 2x5 coro, but two sides are folded flat.
layer one is uhaul pads. they are cut 2x4 but doubled over on the parts with no coro under them.
layer two is towels! the double layer is super helpful with smell. Sometime I want to get some Zorb II for this layer. the towels I use are old ripped up ones or ones I bought myself. They all have guinea pig written on them so that my parents know they're not using a peed on towel!
I sprinkle baking soda religiously between all of my layers--its a tremendous help
layer 3- fleece of course
and also as sort of an idea board from other kids experiences and from parents to kind of give us the other perspective!First I'll start with the system I worked out with my parents about smell, laundry, space, etc. Basically, the major dilemma has been smell. When I was younger, I broke my nose - well practically crushed the left side - leaving me with a pretty awful sense of smell, and that combined with the fact that I keep the trio in my room so I sorta get used to the smell, I really can't smell it unless its pretty bad. However, my parents have really good noses, so I've learned to just always pretend it smells, in order to make it never smell. I started this whole trip with one guinea pig in a pet store cage, with carefresh. Changed bedding once a week; no smell. But once I found the c&c cages and found out that they shouldn't live alone, I convinced my parents to get another one, but when we went to the pet store (bad idea- we ended up with a trio of URI pigs) we ended up getting two. So we moved them all to a 2x5 c&c with carefresh. then I found this site, and fleece, so we switched to fleece, which was nice at first because the carefresh cost was gone. But the smell problem began.
So after about 8 months, I've finally hit the arrangement that works for me.
1) more space is a life saver. Upgraded to a 3x6, and the smell level dropped dramatically.
2) my cage is set up like this:
I'm still using the 2x5 coro, but two sides are folded flat.
layer one is uhaul pads. they are cut 2x4 but doubled over on the parts with no coro under them. layer two is towels! the double layer is super helpful with smell. Sometime I want to get some Zorb II for this layer. the towels I use are old ripped up ones or ones I bought myself. They all have guinea pig written on them so that my parents know they're not using a peed on towel!I sprinkle baking soda religiously between all of my layers--its a tremendous helplayer 3- fleece of course
