How Much Hay For Bedding / Outside Hutch

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smbeale

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Hi, we have an outside hutch for our two guinea pigs... Hutch has been insulated with the foil backed bubble wrap and we have a cover and thick towels to cover front when its been cold... But question about how much hay to put in their bedroom, both in general and with colder nights?

At moment we clear it all out every other day and put a good large handful covering the floor and about 5 inches deep.

Is that adaquet, not enough, way too much ?!

Thanks in advance
 
Hello. Is the hutch in a heated shed or garage without a car? A hutch alone is not enough to protect piggies from winter.
 
If your guinea pigs are not in an insulated shed, I suggest bringing them inside for the Winter. It can get very cold and a hutch alone is not enough to keep them warm.
 
Hi do you have any other sort of floor covering under the hay such as wood shavings, paper, fleece etc? Your answer to this will affect my answer in terms of thickness of hay covering.
 
Whilst having a good pile of hay is helpful it does get squashed down. Snuggle safe heat pads would be good to have for when it gets cold and having a double layered hidey and packing the space between with hay helps keep heat in (i.e. a carboard box with hay inside with another box inside that).
 
I'll tell you our story about how and why we brought our pigs inside, it might help you decide it's better than just hay which isn't a great insulator.

I eventually brought my pigs in for the winter for the first time this year. This was although the hutch had a cover, as well as insulation, pigloos covered in fleece and also Snugglesafe pads (which I cannot recommend enough) - all housed in a gazebo with the sides down so no wind.

We recently invested in some cheapo thermometers from Amazon - the ones with a wire so they can tell the temp in two places - we had one measurement on top of the hutch and one inside the same area as their pigloo, and it records the lowest/highest temp too. They're a bit like this but I think they were cheaper.

Overnight it was getting to 5c overnight but the pigloos were around 12c...but when it started getting colder overnight we bought some indoor homes (my 2 boys don't get on so we need 2 of everything!) and now they live in the dining room. We felt terrible realising we left them out last year in this cold without the Snugglesafe pads as we didn't know as much about guinea pigs then (thank you, forumites!).

We still use the thermometers in the house so we know if it's okay for us to whack the radiator up without them getting too hot.

As an added bonus, we have to walk through our dining room to get to the kitchen and bathroom so we see them a lot more and have noticed more upbeat personalities than when we saw them for only a few times a day outside. I'm really glad we did bring them in, and we know they're safe, warm and have learned the noise of veg chopping equals veggie time from the kitchen! I'm going to miss them when they go back outside!
 
I put 4 layers of newspaper, Huggies bed mat,tumblefresh, pets@home straw because it is soft, then some Nature's best meadow hay. I put a clump of hay and let the guinea pigs flatten it down. Then I put some more hay on top which they can burrow into.
I hope this is helpful!:D
 
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