Little black mites in cage

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MandFpiggies

MandFpiggies

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OK, I've just found tiny black mites running around the girls litter/hay tray, it had just been washed and lined with clean news paper and hay, I pushed back the hay to fold down a corner of the paper a bit further out of site (or the piggies just rip it up) and I saw these little black dots moving. I checked the bags of hay, they aren't in there, I checked the meal bin they aren't in there, they aren't on the piggies (thankfully), a intensive search of the cage turned up 1 more on the edge of the corex and 1 on the fleece about the middle of the cage, but the most of them were (about 6 ) were seen in the tray. They are not fleas (I have enough other animals to know what a flea looks like), they are not lice (they are black), they are easy to squish, if I really had to hazard a guess I'd say house or dust mites, they are about the right size, but why are they in the pigs cage? It's bedded with fleece with news paper and puppy pads at the vital spots underneath, which is changed every 2nd day, and the corex is wiped all over with animal safe spray.

Any Ideas anyone??
 
Just wondering if they maybe from the hay, but cause they're so small you can't see them, or they're at the bottom of the hay bag?

Hope you get to the bottom of this! UGH what a dam nuisance @)
 
I've experenced something similar but this was when I had hamsters.
They had a litter tray for them that was filled with like sand/cat litter like absorbant which came with the tray and you could get refills. I use to keep all of their equiptment and toys under my bed in a box; just a normal plastic storage box. When going to get some equiptment one day, I noticed that one of my refill packets had bust, when looking a little harder I could see something moving around... they were gray little moving dots :(
At that point I was only, what.. lets say 11? So my mum gave all the equiptment a good clean ensuring that the little things were washed away and i've never seen anything like them since.
Maybe the heat has caused them to breed? I recon you should just ensure that everything in the cage has a good antibacterial clean, doing a hot wash on the fleeces and check the pigs. xx
 
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