Does anyone else find bugs in their rodent enclosures?

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@ Splat n Dexter – I’ve googled what you were talking about http://www.store2go.net/shop/gorgeousguineas/?p=product&key=0704150882 , seems quite interesting.


@ Poppy’sMum – When I first looked at book lice pics online I thought they could be the reddy brown tinsy winsy bugs I’ve been seeing in the pen but now I’m not so sure.
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I’m gonna try and get a better look at one tonight but they’re so hard to see cos they’re less than 1mm big and running. There’s no obvious damp in my house and the pen certainly hasn’t been damp, it was very dry under the layers of newspaper. Perhaps they can live happily in dry conditions too.

I don’t want to throw out my pen if it gets contaminated with insecticide, it’d cost a lot to replace and I also can’t get it out of my house anyway. I had to get a man to take a door off the hinges to get it inside.
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I’ve been speaking to my dad about it and he says I’m worrying about nothing and says people at my work are drama queens saying that an infestation can build up under the floors and in the loft, he says if there doesn’t seem to be many around and they’re harmless then to do nothing and stop worrying. That would be the easiest option wouldn’t it?!
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@ Niki and Splat n Dexter – The hay that was laying in my pen for long periods of time was clean hay. I’d been keeping bales in the room all that time and never had problems with bugs in the hay and so I didn’t realise I’d get a problem with the clean hay laid around the sides of the pen under their cardboard tunnels. Plus all the underneath layers of newspaper were all clean. I mean I don’t go and regularly inspect my newspaper cupboard where I keep all clean newspapers and see if there’s bugs in there, you just don’t expect it do you? Hence why I wasn’t regularily pulling up the sides of the newspaper in the pen to see what was underneath. I don’t know how long my infestation was there for but I reckon it was more like a month rather than months as the bugs had only just started to come out a bit and be seen by me.


@ pelicano – Eww.
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I don’t think I’ll do anything just now, might wait a few days and see if the bugs I’m seeing now are just the few homeless wanderers, if more creep out from under the skirting boards and make home in my pen again then I shall get a spray of some sort. In theory if I was spraying at the skirting board then the roddies wouldn’t be in direct contact with anything I’ve sprayed as the mdf pen walls are to waist height. & I can always move the roddies outside on the lawn for a couple of hours afterwards. Or worst case scenario if an outbreak happens and I need a lot of spraying then I could make my roddies live in the living room in their small plastic pet enclosure for a few days. They sure won’t be happy about that though.
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Only saw two bugs last night BTW, one of the tinsy winsy ones in a bed area and another black beetle by the window. Found a grass hoppery thing too which whilst I was trying to herd it out of the window it jumped and landed on me, I screamed like a girl and ran away as fast as possible.
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I’m such a wuss.
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Got it out later though and on the other side of the glass outside was a really weird huge grass hoppery thing, think it wanted to come indoors too.
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Hey there, I once had a bug infestation in my cage. They lived in the hay and straw in one corner and they were teeeny tiiny I only noticed them when I was changing the water. At first I was worried they were fleas but they seemed to fly instead of hop :S I immediatly cleaned out the cage sprayed small animal disenfectant and I let it sit for 10 or so minutes, gave it a scrub and washed it down outside with the hose. Never had them back. I checked over the pigs and they didn;t have any in the fur or any bites so I dunno what they were :S Maybe you have a same kinda thing
 
I had my camera out last night and was taking pictures so took some more of the pen. Thought I’d share them.

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Down the side of my rodent pen where I think bugs have crawled under my skirting board.

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I noticed last night that I have a fair few of these beasties in the piggy room again. Anyway, I was thinking about your situation and mine, and think I may have cracked it. I've been squinting at all the surfaces and trying to work out what they are most attracted to etc. I now don't think they are coming in with the hay, but with the Finacard cardboard bedding. Thinking about it, I never had any problem with these beasties till I started using Finacard (probably a couple of years now!)

This seemed to fit with your situation, ie the layer of cardboard. I'm going to switch beddings once my Finacard is finished, get rid of any cardboard boxes or brown paper bags in their room (there are usually several of these things in there), and then do a spray round with Bob Martin spray around the skirting boards etc when there are no pets in the room.
 
I have good news – I ain’t seen one of my infestation bugs for over two days!
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I’m hoping that means I took away their home and the ones I’d been seeing in the days afterwards were just the few that got away and were made homeless and are now gone. I’m hoping they haven’t set up home behind my wall paneling where I’d seen them coming from, I just hope with my fingers crossed that that’s the end of it and in a few weeks an army of a hundred don’t come running out from behind the walls.
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I have seen other strange insects in my house though, had a real interesting huge beetle in my living room, I think it may possibly have come from a banana box, not sure. I’ve seen a whole variety of bugs in my house recently, it’s quite a zoo.
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@ kamila – Yes, my rodents have an annoying habit of eating the newspaper.
 
@ pelicano – Well the cardboard that was used as a base layer in my rodents room had been down for over 2 years and the cardboard boxes that I had in their pen used as sleeping quarters had been in there about a year or 6 months too so I’m not sure if the bugs came from them. Also the bugs were only on the outside edges of my pen and I found none in the middle under the layers of cardboard so I doubt they came from the base layer as I’d have of expected to see them in the middle of the pen, it seemed more like they started from above the pen and were making themselves a home by burying down at the sides. I find where they actually originated from a bit of a mystery too. It’s quite possible they came from food scraps I give them, they could have been hiding on some of that, or perhaps some food had eggs on that hatched out. There’s all sorts of creepy crawlies that come in with the grass I feed them, perhaps the Adam and Eve’s were in that. Strange that I should have had two different species of creepy crawlies invading at the same time though. They were defo different types and I had about the same numbers of each species.
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Weird.
 
@ pelicano - You know if infestations do originate from cardboard boxes I wonder why people don’t get infestations in their lofts where there's cardboard boxes of junk?
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I have cardboard boxes in places other than in my rodents room, I’ve collecting them from supermarkets and store plastic bags in them under the sink, I have pens in them, I have cardboard boxes in my junk shelves, perhaps the beasties need a really nice environment to hatch out into to survive?
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I’m totally paranoid about bugs now and in my rodents room I have a walk-in wardrobe with shelves where I keep all my junk. There’s no light in there so I keep looking behind all my stuff with a torch.
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My Take That collection is in there and that’s basically a metre long of paperwork and I was thinking if these bugs like paper they’re gonna love my TT collection if they find it.
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Getting them out of that lot would be reaaaal difficult.
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So far I haven’t seen no bugs in there thank God but I was getting seriously worried cos it ain’t far from the pen. I also keep my vacuum in there which I used for sucking up all around the sides of the pen so I probably sucked up a few unfortunate bugs in the process, I keep searching around my vacuum to make sure nothing’s crawling out of it.
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Nerve wracking stuff each time.
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I sure hope you’re able to eradicate your beasties before they take over or move into an area in your house that’s difficult to get them out from. Keep us up-to-date.
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Years ago I used cardboard boxes (the sort that are in your pens used for groceries). I stopped using them after a short while as I found they carried tiny bugs ect in them.. I would stop using them altogether.
 
What’s the alternative for bed areas though?
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My roddies never slept in the oak box that I used to have in there and the pigloo hardly ever got used. They love their boxes.
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Sue_P said:
What’s the alternative for bed areas though?
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My roddies never slept in the oak box that I used to have in there and the pigloo hardly ever got used. They love their boxes.
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I don't think cardboard boxes are a problem as such, as long as you throw them regularly & change them. I find them in Aldi, they always have loads on the shelves & I pick a few up each time I go in there. As soon as they look tatty or smelly (cardboard starts to whiff once piggies wee on/in it) I chuck them & replace. Avoid the ones cereals are stored in & go for plain ones, preferably no tape or colours just in case they get chewed. What about making them some washable cosy cups/beds from fleece then you can give them a quick wash instead?
 
It's still a bit of a mystery, and I'm not certain the bugs are coming from the cardboard bedding, but at the moment it seems the most likely. :{ What doesn't help is that they are so teeny tiny that you can only see them if (a) your eyesight is good (b) they move and (c) you're really looking for them! :)) My OH reckons he can't really see them - it's always me that spots them.

So, I guess if they were in boxes in the loft etc, you wouldn't necessarily spot them unless it was absolutely crawling in the things. Thinking about it, one other place I've seen the horrible things before was in an egg box. At the time I thought it must be something to do with the eggs, but I now think it was the box!

Unfortunately, I have loads of Finacard to use up, so I'm going to do that, then change bedding and then do a huge clean up. I gave the whole room a good wipe down yesterday and threw out some boxes, which seems to have reduced the numbers down a bit.
 
cardboard boxes in general seem fine...but grocery boxes that have carried vegetables and fruits in them seem to have more of a chance of carrying bugs...
 
@ Poppy’sMum – My Aldi never seems to have cardboard boxes lying around spare, I could steal them from the shelves too but that’s a bit cheeky.
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I usually get mine from Morrisons and use the banana boxes and yeah boxes go manky if peed on which I found last night cos one had a bit of a bottom to it and I had to get out my stanley knife and get cutting it off. It’d only been in there for a week and had white powdery pee on, was soggy and had poos stuck on it.
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I did used to go through boxes regularly for the first year or so of having rodents but then the boxes I liked disappeared from Morrisons so I stuck with the same ones I had for ages cos I couldn’t find others to replace them with. Some boxes last longer than others though, one’s from work that have had A4 paper in last about a week or two because the sides of them go rank and then they flop and bend.

Regarding fleece – no way.
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@ pelicano – I seriously doubt my mother would be able to see the small critters too, she has bad eye sight.
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I had my torch down the sides of my pen again last night staring transfixed at the odd bit of dirt to see if it moved.
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Sure enough one tinsy winsy thing ran under my skirting board.
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& I found a small black beetle (not fully grown I don’t think) on my rodent room door and then when I added in new hay to the pen one came out of that.
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At the mo I have a paper bag of hay that came to my house after my clean up and that was from my mum’s bale, I’m just using that up so my guess is that the bug flew into the bag rather than it coming from the bag. I’m totally paranoid now, I keep lifting up hay and shaking it to see what comes out and if anything moves and keep flashing my torch down the sides of the pen to see if anything new has crawled out from the woodwork. I think I’m gonna give myself a nervous breakdown with my bug obsession.
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Found two little spiders by my skirting boards though which I’m keeping, they’re probably smart spiders and realise that there’s a good and plentiful food supply nearby.
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Perhaps the critters on the egg box were feeding on chicken sh*t particles.
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Perhaps they weren’t drawn to the cardboard but the bacteria on it I mean. Did you take your eggs back to the shop?
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I had some little critters hatch out on my kitchen windowbottom once from some flower seeds I had on there drying out for a few weeks. One day there was none, the next there was an army.
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Thankfully my kitchen windowbottom is lower down from the kitchen worktops so they were sort of trapped on the windowbottom and weren’t making it all around my kitchen. I managed to sweep them all up with a dustpan and brush, I’m pretty sure they’re the same type of tiny critters I’ve been seeing now. I still need to study what they look like better, I had the opportunity last night as I saw one on my wood paneling but my reaction to it was SPLAT and then I thought to myself that I should have taken the time to stare at it properly beforehand.
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They’re so fast though and I didn’t want it getting away like the other I’d seen earlier that zoomed under my skirting board. If I can’t ge rid of these critters in the next couple of weeks I’m going to register at a bug forum and become a bug nerd and get educated.
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I’m sure bug nerds would be able to tell us exactly what they like whether it’s the cardboard, bacteria on it, perhaps bacteria on hay, and where exactly they come from.


Oh, and I found another larvae maggoty thing last night too.
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That was a couple of inches from my skirting board, hope flies ain’t laying egg/maggoty things behind the wood paneling too.
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@ scribble – I have a load of grocery boxes sat on my living room sofa at the mo, when I shift them I’ll be pulling up my sofa cushions and giving it a thorough inspection, that’s for sure.
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Just to update on this saga, I am now as sure as I can be that mine are book lice, and the cardboard is the issue. I stared at a box in my hamster carrier last night (which is downstairs and nowhere near the guinea pig room, and no hay is stored downstairs), and I spotted a moving beastie on it.

I am busily getting rid of all boxes etc, but will have to use up the Finacard bedding as I have so much left.

From what I've read, the book lice feed on dust and tiny mould spores on paper sources. Given that hay produces a fair bit of dust, it makes sense as to why cardboard and hay are potentially a bad combination (eg. the dusty top of my big box of Oxbow hay was particularly bad - I've now taken all the hay out of it).

So, for now it's a case of trying to keep things as dust-free as possible, and wait till all the Finacard is used up!
 
@ pelicano – Good luck! Looks like we’ll both need it.
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I’m thinking of investing in a mop. I reckon down the sides of my pen have a surface layer of grot on. When I mucked out my pen totally I cleaned the laminate floor inside my pen and vacuumed around the sides of the pen with a nozzle as there isn’t enough room to pysically touch the floor around my pen to scrub it. I keep shining my torch down the sides and am convinced afew live down there by my skirting board so I wanna scrub that floor, I need a mop to reach it.
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I found another tinsy winsy creepy crawly in a bed area last night. I tried looking at it closer before squidging it but it was just too damn small to see in detail. I think I need to invest in a magnifying glass too.
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I also found two more immature black beetles on my wooden walk-in wardrobe door again. I think I’m going to have to have a serious search under all my rubble in there to see if any are actually living in there.
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& this morning I looked inside my wheelie bin which contains last week’s old cardboard from the pen refresh that I had sat up against my hut in all the windy and wet weather cos my bin was full, it’s now ridden with lice. A different sort though, a common sort that I’ve seen before in the garden. Some hatched out of some wild flower seeds that I had in my hut the other week, I used to see them a lot in my mum’s greenhouse too. I reckon some will have made it in and around my hut and possibly bugs will have crawled out of the rubbish I’ve had piled up against my house for the last week and a half due to my bins being full, I have air vents right where the bags are, they’re probably just investigating my kitchen cupboards right now. Aaaaaarrrrgghhhhhhh! I want them all gone.
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One good thing is that at least when the weather gets a bit colder and dryer (due to heating being on etc), the conditions should no longer be right for all this insect activity!
 
I was just reading that whilst googling beetles. It said for one type they don’t breed under 18 degrees, well it’s about 15 degrees in my house at the mo and in winter I’m stingy with the heat and whilst I’m out I let the temp go down to about 11 or 12 degrees. Last year my s*ddin’ water pipes upstairs froze and I couldn’t have a shower for a week.
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You wouldn’t believe what I found on my rodents’ room ceiling last night!
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A bug about 14mm in body length and 2cm long if you included it’s tentacles!
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Don’t ask me what sort it was, I ain’t a clue but it left me muttering to myself about it for the rest of the night like a lunatic.
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Sure hope it weren’t pregnant and laid some eggs somewhere. I defo couldn'’ live with bugs that size roaming all over.
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BTW I’ve now found out that the maggoty larvae things I was finding are actually beetle larvae and they weren’t going to grow up to be flies. I was thinking they were laid by flies but beetles produce larvae like that too so I guess my maggoty things were all baby beetles.
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Oh and I think I may have been mistaken with some recent bugs I’ve been finding, I’ve found about 2 or 3 on my walk-in wardrobe door which I thought at the time were small black baby beetles like the ones I’d been seeing in the pen. I was inspecting my door last night to see if any of the beetles have been wood boring beetles and were leaving holes and discovered some more bugs on my door. They were hiding in the crevices of the decorative parts. My rodent room has been a dusty place for the last few years. I dust once a week around the house but the rodent room always coats my duster in dust when I go round, presumably cos of the hay, well the doors get a lot of dust on too and I haven’t religiously cleaned the dust off them cos you can’t see it. Well a closer inspection revealed bugs within the dust. Dunno what they were, they were about 1mm long, perhaps a bit bigger and oblong shaped and a sort of grey brown colour. Found about 5 in the grooves last night within the dust and then gave it a good stroking with a brush to remove all the dust. Wonder how many species of bugs I’ve actually had in my house recently?
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Are they little black bugs smaller than ants or in fact I would say they are the size of an ants abdomen.

When I used meadow hay - I got thousands of these little black bugs all over my cage, on my walls and ceiling - it was soooo awful - they come from the meadow hay.

the black bugs eat anything like hay, chipboard wood, adore cardboard, damp areas too in property

I now buy everything burgess cos the black bugs somehow dont live in there.

The other solution would be to buy a second hand chest freezer and when you buy hay - put the bags of hay in this chest freezer for more than 24 hours - it will kill the bugs and their eggs

Hoover (empty hoover bag straight after or they will crawl back out into room) and clean everything with a pet friendly cleaner to make sure all eggs and bugs are killed

I even collected some in a jar and showed my petshop but he didnt seem interested grrrr and said we havent had any other complaints
 
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@ PiggyLove - I haven’t yet identified my small black beetles yet but they look a bit similar to this http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/26_6232.htm but jet black and are 2mm long. Could they be the same as what you had?


I’m not surprised your pet shop didn’t give two hoots. Typical.
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Sue_P said:
@ PiggyLove - I haven’t yet identified my small black beetles yet but they look a bit similar to this http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/26_6232.htm but jet black and are 2mm long. Could they be the same as what you had?


I’m not surprised your pet shop didn’t give two hoots. Typical.
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it really upset me seeing them all crawling all over the bars of the cage and up my walls - I was constantly looking at my walls and saw some and it was in the cage area where the hay was :( I was using the meadow hay which was only £1.90 for large bag

Since ive stopped using that hay I dont get them anymore thank goodness

That photo looks exactly like Psocids/book lice look at this link. I got my little samples analysed by environmental health

they like damp humid places - and eat things like cardboard/ cheap wood/ hay / paper / books and plaster and damp mould

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ph...niv&sa=X&ei=14h7TqzmJMS98gP9g8E1&ved=0CCwQsAQ

making me feel itchy eeeeuw I hate them :(
 
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My latest is that wiping things over definitely really helps. I peered at the walls this morning, and the areas which I wasn't really able to reach had a few of the lice crawling on them (presumably attracted to the thin coating of hay dust and general wall grime!), whereas the areas where I had wiped over yesterday were mostly clear. Obviously I can't be washing my walls every day! rolleyes
 
pelicano said:
My latest is that wiping things over definitely really helps. I peered at the walls this morning, and the areas which I wasn't really able to reach had a few of the lice crawling on them (presumably attracted to the thin coating of hay dust and general wall grime!), whereas the areas where I had wiped over yesterday were mostly clear. Obviously I can't be washing my walls every day! rolleyes
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awful things arnt they. I was so stressed cos i was worrying a lot when I had them ages ago - once they gone you will feel better xx>>>
 
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