Litter Boxes...used?

I had one guinea pig that tended to use a litter box but I think it was just because she liked sleeping in there. Some guinea pigs seem to prefer to go in a certain spot but I don't think they can be trained to go in a litter box all the time.

Yea, I agree that littler box training is a fruitless effort... the pigs do not care enough to be inclined to venture across the cage every 5 minutes when they have to poop. If you find the places they like to use the most, you could place a litter box there and keep your fingers crossed. Mine tend to find the first "protected" spot in the cage and just go for it at that point.

Mine use their litter boxes primarily! I would say 90% of the pee ends up there. Its totally worth it for me to use them.
They key is to keep the food in there and keep it covered so they feel comfortable using it. The poop goes everywhere but that's not the stinky part.

Mine is almost completely trained somehow! She is s baby still but never has a pee outside her box and almost every poo is in there too. She has a litter box in her kitchen and a small corner box on the main floor.

I just got a few maybe 2 weeks ago. Whenever I'm home, my pigs are out on the floor, which means some days they're out pretty much the whole day if I'm working from home. They have constant access to their cage via a ramp, and although they'll return there to munch on hay or occasionally nap, they didn't tend to go back just for a wee lol they had certain corners around the room that they had been consistently weeing in, so I put a litter pan in these corners, with a layer of carefresh in them. My pigs actually love them! they like to hang out and nap in them. And-- success!-- I haven't found one puddle since I got them. The occasional poop, but not piles like before. It's brilliant.

My guinea pig uses her litter box most of the time. All I did was put a litterbox under her hay and she just did most of her business in there I have a 3x5 cage and when my guinea pig had the whole thing to herself she only pooed maybe once outside of her litter box and peed once in a corner where she likes to sleep. It was amazing, and a very easy clean! Now she lives in a 3x3 part of the cage (my foster guinea pig get the 2x3 part) and she isn't as clean as she was when she was living in the entire 3x5, but she's much cleaner than most guinea pigs. When I go to pick her up she usually runs into her litter box and does her business and then lets me pick her up Guinea pigs are so funny!

I usually use Back-2-Nature litter in the litter box, which is very similar to Yesterdays News, but I ran out and haven't been able to get to the store so I have been using carefresh and it seems to be much smellier than the Back-2-Nature. Oh, I use puppy pads under my bedding in the litter box, but I have used newspaper and that works well too!
Here's what it looks like:

My girls use their litter box most of the time because that's where the hay is.

I have two litter boxes. One has the veggies in it and the other has the pellets and hay. My resident pig, Timbit, uses his boxes about oh, 90% of the time. I find a stray poop or two around the edges of the boxes and in his fleece hidey, but otherwise, he's very consistent and I'm a happy camper. When I change out all the bedding, most of the fabric is dry except in his hidey and right next to the veggie litter box (ha, maybe he wasn't eating those times and is too lazy to jump in and use it).

The pig we just adopted, Pumpkin, who is in quarantine right now has one litter box with his veggie and pellet dish. He uses it haphazardly. The rest of the time, he's been pooping in his pigloo and the corner. There's also urine throughout the cage. I've been trying to head him off with a corner toilet, but every time I move the toilet to his favorite pooping corner, he switches it. I can only hope that once he's in the 2x5 C&C he follows Timbit's lead.

It wouldn't make a difference in my cage if I had a litter box or not! They just don't care. At. All. Poo and pee everywhere. Messy little dudes. I think that Ben does most of his business in the hay loft because he is in the hay loft 90% of his day but other than that, doesn't really matter.

My piggies use the litter box for their pee and some poops, so it makes it so much easier for cleaning because all of the stuff on the fleece is dry.

Awhile back when I had my girls separated for about 2 weeks (Was having trouble bonding them) I noticed my one pig would use her litter box to go poo in. She would do most of her business in there and it was a small litter pan too. She just taught herself, I guess. My other pig, she never cared, she goes whenever and whereever she may be at the time, no second thoughts. When I put them back together again and ever since they just go wherever they might be at the time.
The one and ONLY time they are "trained" is for floor time. FOr some reason if I put down one big pigloo with a potty pad under it they will go in there to pee/poo basically 99% of the time. Which is great since I can just let them roam the carpet without tons of blankets like i used to do.

Ok so I'm gonna with yesterday's news being the best in the litter box? And is it better with puppy pads underneath? how often do you replace them and are they expensive?

I don't use puppy pads but use yesterdays news pellets. For me a 25 pound bag that costs $11 lasts about 4 months and I have two litter boxes and change them every two days. I just don't use a lot in each one... a few handfuls.

I like using puppy pads underneath my bedding in the litter boxes because I think it's easier to clean and the litter box doesn't get as gross with it in there. You can also use newspaper which is cheaper. I would clean the litter box about every few days, or depending on how often your guinea pigs use them. I get my puppy pads from the Dollar Store or from Walmart and my mom usually runs out to get them for me so I don't know the exact price, but I know they aren't too expensive because a pack of them will last you a while and my mom wouldn't spend too much money on puppy pads

What bedding do you use?

ILoveMillie said:

I like using puppy pads underneath my bedding in the litter boxes because I think it's easier to clean and the litter box doesn't get as gross with it in there. You can also use newspaper which is cheaper. I would clean the litter box about every few days, or depending on how often your guinea pigs use them. I get my puppy pads from the Dollar Store or from Walmart and my mom usually runs out to get them for me so I don't know the exact price, but I know they aren't too expensive because a pack of them will last you a while and my mom wouldn't spend too much money on puppy pads

Click to expand...

I usually use Back-2-Nature which is basically the same thing as Yesterday's News and I love it! I haven't been able to get some for a while since where I get it is 30 min away, so I have been using Carefresh and it's a great bedding but it smells quicker than Back-2-Nature and is much more expensive! So I would go with Yesterday's News as your bedding if you had to choose between that and Carefresh.

I don't use kiln-dried wood chips because I use fleece in the rest of my cage and I have heard it is hard to get off of the fleece. Back-2-Nature and Carefresh are easy to shake or brush off of the fleece.

Where do you get it? Is it cheaper than Yesterday's News?

I get Back-2-Nature at a sort of local feed store and I think it's about $11-$15. On the Petsmart website it says Yesterday's News is $15.99 so it's not a huge difference in price.

I use the same bedding as @ILoveMillie -- Back 2 Nature -- and it works really, really well! We both buy it at the local hay farm/feed shop, but you can also buy it on Amazon: (broken link removed). Yesterday's News is also great, but the pieces are really hard and sometimes my pigs try to eat it, so I don't like it as much. Back 2 Nature has soft pieces and my pigs don't eat them!

I have a hay rack (a bent C&C cage grid) zip-tied to the side of my cage, and dispense hay that way. I have a litter box underneath that just has the Back 2 Nature -- it's meant mainly to catch any hay that falls out, but also to try to contain some of the "business" they do while eating. But like others have said, litter-training is a challenge and it didn't work out for my pigs. But cleaning my cages isn't too hard or time-consuming. I think part of it is I use fleece bedding, so it's just a solid surface, and I use a small broom and dustpan, which makes it go a whole lot faster. I use (broken link removed)and it works really well!

Here's a picture:



Hope that helps!