I want to love fleece bedding... But it's just not working out for me..

Zoedarl

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So I've had my two piggies on fleece for a while now, I've heard such rave reviews and people getting on really well with it... But it just doesn't seem to be working out for me.
I find it a nightmare to brush, they poop everywhere and under it, I'm not enjoying wash days, and it just seems really high maintainace. 😬 I'm
I wondered if anyone has any fleece tips or any recommendations of any other products that they get on well with? Ideally something with as little dust possible and allergy friendly.
I have 2 boars, in a 2x5 c&c cage

Thanks 😊
 
A new thing on the scene seems to be noodle bath mats. @Bill & Ted . She has just started using them.

Aubious is another dust free bedding you can have a research of
 
We have an area of Kaytee clean and cozy bedding in our cage and I would highly recommend it as disposable beddings go, its a bit expensive for what is basically dust free flakes of recycled paper but it stays dry and odourless for days and wicks away pee to the newspaper layer we put underneath!
We do twice weekly cage cleans as we have fleecy areas too but the Kaytee area never really looks or smells like it needs cleaning after 3 or 4 days (until you look under the surface of course, but thats not what touches the piggies feet or we can smell!)
 
You are not the only one who finds that fleece doesn’t work for them.
I tried it but found that I just could not cope with the poop scooping or laundry so reverted to wood shavings.
We all use what works best for us.
 
I’ve had some negative experience with Etsy fleece. Just because it had an issue drying urine and sucked when wash day came around and I needed to brush it off.
HOWEVER. upon finding guinea dad liners and other liners that stitch through out the liner, and not just at the ends, it’s a lot easier to brush off Small bits of hay, without it bunching up the fabric.
though before fleece, I used care fresh paper bedding as well and it worked well, it was just too messy for my liking and got pretty expensive. Especially for two boars, which I have two boars in the same size c&c cage, and it took quite a bit of bedding!
 
I use the microfibrel bath mats one end with an old towel underneath, which are super absorbant so they don't sit on wet patches. Easy to brush off and poo pick. The other end I have a washable puppy pad or am also trialing cheap pound shop puppy pads. I find it a lot easier than fleece with I used years ago. Will upload a pic78203371_428890121116789_1203056232651292672_n.webp78488725_1534986153320612_9208372099796697088_n.webp
 
I tried fleece for about a week, if I'm honest, and I was never prepared to try for more than that. I switched between Carefresh (great, but expensive, although I found one of the 50l bags would cover a 4x4 space which wasn't horrendous), Back2Nature (hard paper pellets, essentially, I know others on the forum have tried them and not liked them because they are very solid pellets, but my boys never seemed to mind, I only stopped because the bags were horrendously heavy and I couldn't carry them up a flight of concrete stairs safely), and finally Megazorb. I liked Megazorb, a little went a long way, but it does have a smell some people find offputting and some people think it's too dusty. Again, I never had a problem with that.
 
I tried the fleece too looked really cute but my piggies did not like it kept scrapping it up and making a right mess with it, then with the wee it got saturated (even brought a waterproof guinapig fleece) still no good so had to go back to sawdust guinea pigs were happy again one for the memories lol 😝
 

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I struggled with fleece to begin with also.

Basically, I use my hoover to hoover the cage at least once, sometimes 2-3 times, a day. I use the dyson v6 in handheld mode, tends to pick up most of it.
One point to note is that since i found better quality polar fleece and started using it in the liners, I'm finding them much easier to hoover and pick the wood shavings, hay etc off of it. (I use the red tartan fleece from theworks shop, currently £4 each, although they always have discount codes.
Inside the liners, I use Zorb, this seems to absorb a lot more than other materials I've tried using.

After hoovering it, if changing the cage, I hold the liner against the tiles in my shower and hose it down with the shower head, this gets the last bits off, then i put the liner inside a pillow case tied in the washing machine.

Also before taking the liner out of the cage, I shake it over the cage floor (which i line with puppy pads) and then I just fold the puppy pads up with the mess inside and throw it in a rubbish bag.

As previously mentioned, stitching the liner all over, rather than just the edges, also helps (especially when hoovering it!)
 
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