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Fleece White Crusty Pee Spots, Washing Doesn't Fix. Suggestions Please!

Hankskr

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I have some issues with my fleece liners. My female pig cage has some "favorite" spots that they go on, and the crusty white spots don't come out no matter how much I was them. They are females, and I know what the stuff that boys leave behind looks like so it's not the boar glue stuff. I read somewhere its a result from too much calcium but I don't know what I've been giving them for that to happen. Anyway, is it possible to remove this crustiness? I use Purcell non-scented detergent, and white distilled vinegar. There was another post about this and I signed in to reply and now its gone....

Any suggestions other than soaking in vinegar?
 

Nannub

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How often do you change your fleece pads? Do you wash them with hot water?

If your piggy diet high in calcium? Maybe you can reduce their calcium intake and have less white spots, or also you can put a pee pad on that particular area and change it every day or every other day to prevent it from staining your fleece.
 

bpatters

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Use a stronger detergent, hot water, and bleach.
 

Hankskr

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My washer has a hot then cold setting so I use that one when washing. I wash them once a week and vacuum everyday. I have the normal setup of a fleece liner and 2 uhaul pads then a Coloplast center. I don't use bleach so I will try that next. Do you use straight up bleach for the patterned fleece liners? Or do you use the bleach for colors? How do I find out if their diet is high in calcium? I feed them to Timothy hay, carefresh complete menu guinea pig food and either national Geographic entrée or Dr foster and Smith signature guinea pig food. Also give cabbage, carrots and romaine things like that.
 

Nannub

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bpatters

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The color of fleece is all through the fibers, it's not dyed. So it's not affected by bleach until after you've used it many, many times.

The only pellets we recommend are KMS Hayloft and the new Oxbow formulation that has no calcium carbonate (limestone) in it. All the others are too high in calcium.
 

CavyTV

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Even SPS pellets? I thought they were better (and less expensive) than Oxbow..
 

Hankskr

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I am going to try the Hayloft stuffs. Put the order in earlier. Hopefully my pigs will eat it cause they are very selective and picky eaters. I have to waste so much food over it. Bleach helped a little but not on the crustiest of spots. Any recommendations for good detergent?
 

bpatters

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SPS pellets are made with calcium carbonate, which has been implicated in bladder stone formation. If you can find a pellet that doesn't have it, you should definitely use it. Neither KMS nor the new Oxbow has calcium carbonate.
 

equinox96

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For the white crusty spots... do you know if you have hard water or soft water? You can call your city if your don't know.

This makes a big difference as to how you treat your wash. No matter what, in either cases an overnight soak in very hot water with regular detergent helps. It takes at least 15 minutes for detergent to bond to certain stains and longer if those are really tough stains so regular washes don't do the trick. Soaking fights stains, agitation releases them.

If you know you don't have hard water, then you can use vinegar but not at the same time as your detergent. Vinegar is acidic and detergent is alkaline so they basically eliminate themselves. This being said, vinegar is an excellent product when used properly, it is great as a pre-soak on its own or in the washer with water (then rinse before washing) or as a rinse in the rinse cycle.

If you have hard water, using Calgon in your washer should help but I am less familiar with this method.

Good luck
 
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