Bedding Best beddings for cages?

[Prolix33]

Hello! I'm new and was wondering what types of bedding are best for Guinea Pigs. I was planning on using aspen, but I've seen that fleece is rather popular.

So......
What type of bedding do you think is best?

 

[pinky]

I use half fleece pads and the other half unscented Fresh News for Cats

 

[pepperbelle]

I use hard wood pellets with fleece over the top. I am also currently trying a litter pan in their kitchen with just the wood pellets (no fleece).

I originally tried carefresh in the kitchen but i found it very messy.

 

[lunarminx]

The best bedding is what is healthy for the piggies and works best for you.

 

[Cavylover986]

Fleece is great, but is quite a bit of work. It is really based on preference. Fleece, carefresh, wood pellets are all great. I personally have never used shavings though

 

[kawaii.piggies]

I personally think fleece is the best. It's really easy to manage, and you can have cute prints in your cage! I have one huge piece of fleece (from Joanns) that I just take out while my guinea pig is out of the cage and dump the poop in the outside trashcan. I have two big pieces of fleece that i switch out every three days to wash. You also would need towels to go under the fleece to absorb the pee, I use use one thick one and two thin ones (I have a 2x3). I really suggest fleece because it's easy to clean, and you can have cage themes with the prints

 

[80s_piggies]

I have used them all and recently went to fleece with towels underneath. I don't think I'll ever go back. It is a bit more time consuming for a full change sometimes, but for me the benefits outweigh that. I especially love always knowing that it is clean. I never miss a poop when I do my twice daily tidy ups. Its soft and looks great and I change mine twice a week and it has never smelled ever. I don't buy bedding anymore, just wash what I have

 

[ciaraelise]

I used care fresh paper bedding first. I thought I liked it but when I switched to other stuff I realized it had a funky smell and was much messier an harder to clean.

From care fresh I switched to Aspen. Again I thought I liked that too! It was significantly cheaper which I loved.But I had to clean the cage twice or more a week to ride the cage of Chester's urine smell since he is really sensitive. I felt like I was wasting a lot of good bedding while getting rid of the soiled stuff. THe only time it looked clean was after I cleaned it and hadn't put Chester in it yet- lol!

I switched to fleece and towels and I really like it!! I want to eventually get haul pads ins tread of towels but right now this has been the best for me. I sweep daily with a little dustpan that was 99 cents . I can see calcium spots way easier and am able to flex my pigs diet quicker. The babes seem to like to cuddle in the fleece abetter than aspen and way better than care fresh. I was worried switching my oldest pig Max to fleece because his previous owners never clipped his nails and they were severely curls but after cutting them down a bit and giving hims extra cushion with towels under the fleece he doesn't mind at all!

The biggest draw back on fleece for me personally is hay sticking to the fabric. Dollar tree sells little bins for kid cubbys that work well for kitchens and I desperately need to invest in a few.

The biggest differences between aspen(and care fresh) and fleece is that I don't have to scrub urine and calcium spots off the bottoms of the cage. In disposable bedding the liquid dripped to the bottom and sat there. Even when I did two full blown clean outs a week I still had to scrub. With fleece I sweep daily, I have a great gauge on how much my pig pees and poops now too. I do one full clean up a week. it's longer than the clean ups with disposable bedding because I have to wait until the fleece is washed and dried but that means the babes get an extra long floor time- which they don't mind at all!! I beat the hay off the fleece before I but it in the washer and if you use the right detergent/neutralizer you don't have a hot piggie smell out of the dryer.


And fleece is super cute <3

Again it totally depends on you and your pigs. there are lots of pigs you hate fleece or hate aspen. And us people have our preferences too! But there's my 2 cents for ya, I hope it helped!!

 

[pepperbelle]

I just did a *full* cage change with the hard wood pellets for the first time. It only took me about 10 minutes to swap out the old pellets for new - not bad for once every 8 weeks!!!

The full change including wiping down the kitchen, adding new carefresh, cleaning and refreshing water bottle, cleaning food bowl, topping off hay, clipping new fleece on, etc. took about 20-25 minutes. I thought it would take a lot longer. Woo hoo!

For the pellet swap - I scooped out all the majority of the remaining old pellets with a dust pan, and then used my vacuum hose to suck up all the extra dust and pellets. Worked great!

Clean cage ftw!



Happy piggy train

 

[PeanutnCookie]

I find that bedding, like the aspen you were thinking of using, tends to fly out of the cage more, along with the poop. You will have to clean it out at least once a week, and it can be expensive.

Fleece doesn't let the poop fly out, except for the occasional piece or two. I used towels under the fleece but it has to be cleaned WAY more often because the towels soak up a lot of pee. At a lot of feed stores they sell pellets you can put under the fleece or use as bedding. But there will probably be a build up of hair in your washer and/or dryer, so you will need to find a way to get the hair off.

Someone I know uses it for her guinea pigs and it doesn't have to be cleaned as often, if under fleece only once a month or more. If you used them as bedding, you will probably have to clean it out more often, every two weeks or less. The feed stores sell big bags for around $5-10, and they last a long time.

 

[bpatters]

There are a thousand threads on here with plenty of discussions about bedding. Check the Fleece forum for plenty of ideas.