Hi,
I'm new here, we don't have piggies yet but are planning to get a couple once we've finished completely re-doing our daughter's bedroom, as they'll live in there. We have space for a 5x2 C&C cage, planning to get one with a stand. But we want to make sure that the room itself is suitable for floor time. We'll make sure the furniture doesn't have any small gaps that they could squeeze behind and get stuck, and sockets/cables will either be inaccessible or we can make them inaccessible by blocking them off during floor time. But my main question concerns the flooring we put down in the room, since we're changing it anyway.
My daughter has a strong preference for carpet, but this seems a bit risky to me in terms of clean up afterwards? Would love to hear of others' experiences with room flooring and floor time! Currently considering the following options:
1) Carpet the room, buy a play pen for floor time and cover that area with waterproof material covered in fleece - downside is that this would cut down on the piggies' open space, would be tricky to pen off an area any larger than their cage, so not sure if ok long term, although we could potentially do this to start off and then move to 2...
2) Carpet the room and try to put waterproof material/fleece down in the spots where they're more likely to wee/poo, without using a pen - this would open up more space, they could use the compartments under the cage/stand etc, but is it inevitable that they'll wee on the exposed carpet anyway, however hard we try to guess where they'll go?! Any recommendations for the best sort of carpet to go for here? I'm thinking poos shouldn't be too hard to clean up but wees could start to smell after a while especially if undetected?
3) put some sort of hard flooring down, probably LVT, which can be cleaned more easily, but still use fleece/pee pads in some areas to make them more comfortable for the piggies - my daughter is less keen on this option but her main motive for having her room done is the piggies so she might settle for this... Would probably want a fluffy rug in this case, which could be removed or have a waterproof/fleece layer over it for floor time.
We're hoping to get our piggies from a shelter, ideally an adult bonded pair rather than babies. But we won't know to what extent they'll be litter trained and need to make a decision on the room flooring first...
Would really appreciate some advice, thanks in advance!
I'm new here, we don't have piggies yet but are planning to get a couple once we've finished completely re-doing our daughter's bedroom, as they'll live in there. We have space for a 5x2 C&C cage, planning to get one with a stand. But we want to make sure that the room itself is suitable for floor time. We'll make sure the furniture doesn't have any small gaps that they could squeeze behind and get stuck, and sockets/cables will either be inaccessible or we can make them inaccessible by blocking them off during floor time. But my main question concerns the flooring we put down in the room, since we're changing it anyway.
My daughter has a strong preference for carpet, but this seems a bit risky to me in terms of clean up afterwards? Would love to hear of others' experiences with room flooring and floor time! Currently considering the following options:
1) Carpet the room, buy a play pen for floor time and cover that area with waterproof material covered in fleece - downside is that this would cut down on the piggies' open space, would be tricky to pen off an area any larger than their cage, so not sure if ok long term, although we could potentially do this to start off and then move to 2...
2) Carpet the room and try to put waterproof material/fleece down in the spots where they're more likely to wee/poo, without using a pen - this would open up more space, they could use the compartments under the cage/stand etc, but is it inevitable that they'll wee on the exposed carpet anyway, however hard we try to guess where they'll go?! Any recommendations for the best sort of carpet to go for here? I'm thinking poos shouldn't be too hard to clean up but wees could start to smell after a while especially if undetected?
3) put some sort of hard flooring down, probably LVT, which can be cleaned more easily, but still use fleece/pee pads in some areas to make them more comfortable for the piggies - my daughter is less keen on this option but her main motive for having her room done is the piggies so she might settle for this... Would probably want a fluffy rug in this case, which could be removed or have a waterproof/fleece layer over it for floor time.
We're hoping to get our piggies from a shelter, ideally an adult bonded pair rather than babies. But we won't know to what extent they'll be litter trained and need to make a decision on the room flooring first...
Would really appreciate some advice, thanks in advance!