Wood shavings or fleece for extra messy pigs?

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Expiallidoshus

Junior Guinea Pig
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My girls are saints. They really only poop in their litter box in the kitchen that has aspen shavings and in one other corner where they hang out. They have fleece in their cage hat gets washed probably every 4 days. My 2 boys on the other hand are ridiculously messy. They have the same set up, but they literally poop everywhere! And they’re in the habit of dragging hay and aspen shavings all around the fleece. When I clean their cage, it looks horrible after an hour. It’s almost like they just take their hay out for the fun of it and it’s super wasteful. And the hay and aspen shavings are really hard to get off the fleece before washing it. I even built an enclosure that goes around their litter box with a hole where they can go in an out of the kitchen, but they still manage to drag hay and wood out. What are your thoughts? Is it easier to keep their cage entirely with aspen shavings? It’s a 2x4 C&C cage.
 
Hi! I have two messy boars, so I know what you feel like. My boys are not littered trained, they mostly only pee in it. I have the whole cage with fleece. I put the hay on the floor on one end of the cage. I use paper towel for the litter box so it is easy to clean up. I’ve heard that aspen is bad for most small animals. If you switch to something maybe try paper bedding. That’s what I used before I got fleece. I wouldn’t use aspen on the whole cage personally. I hope this helped!
 
I used paper for a while but found that it smelled so bad and I had to change it out too often, it wasn’t cost effective. I thought pine was bad for small animals, but that aspen shavings were okay? The paper made so much dust and aspen is virtually dust free and a lot cheaper. I haven’t had any health problems since switching but I’ll double check the internet on safety.
 
If aspen is safe for small animals then I don’t see a problem with using it for the whole cage. My only concern would be that it’s to hard. I’ve never used it before so I can’t say for sure. If I was given a choice between aspen or fleece bedding I would choose fleece.
 
They don’t seem to mind the shavings in the litter box. Even when they’re not eating they sometimes just lay in there and hang out. I’m also having a baby in a few weeks and am not super excited about washing their pee and poop fleece in the same place I’ll be washing my baby’s clothes. I dunno, I’ll just have to try it out and see if it works
 
Expiallidoshus said:
They don’t seem to mind the shavings in the litter box. Even when they’re not eating they sometimes just lay in there and hang out. I’m also having a baby in a few weeks and am not super excited about washing their pee and poop fleece in the same place I’ll be washing my baby’s clothes. I dunno, I’ll just have to try it out and see if it works
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That’s exactly why we quit using fleece. I was wayyyyyyy to grossed out by washing the fleece in the same place as the baby stuff plus I find wood shavings to be far less work than the twice daily spot cleaning and changing the bedding out every 3 days that the fleece required. The wood shavings allowed us to only have to spot clean every other day as my 2 girls have a large cage and once a week we change the whole cage! Anything to save us the energy as new parents is worth it. Congrats on your new bundle, babies are truly wonderful!
 
Thank you all! For those who use shavings with a similar sized cage, how much do you usually go through in a month? Right now I’ve only been doing it in litter boxes and changing those out every two days in two cages, a small $5 bag will lay about two weeks
 
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