Wood Shavings Or Fleece?

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Jade_bear

Jade_bear

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Hello,

All my Guinea pigs life I've used wood shavings and I've seem to have gotten on absolutely fine. However a few weeks ago I had a spare few minutes and did some research on bedding etc and I found out that it's common to use fleece bedding. As the wood shavings is bad for the little piggies lungs. So I changed my piggies bedding to fleece. However I feel like it's a lot more dirtier as it holds the urine and absolutely smells.

What shallI do? Shall I keep the fleece or go back to wood shavings? Or has anyone else got any other bedding suggestions. Please help me !

Many thanks
 
I still haven't made up my mind ! I use a combination of bedding and fleece cage liners !

The beddings I use are aubiose ( I can get this at a good price from a local equine suppliers) I find Aubiose is great in hay trays. I like Fitch too - it is much softer that Aubiose - but more expensive. I also like Finacard .

I love fleece - but I find the big drawback with fleece having to wash it.
 
Fleece shouldn't be soaking wet, the idea of using fleece is that it wicks away the urine, but this only works if your fleece has been machine washed at least 3 times before, and that there is an absorbant layer underneath the fleece to absorb the urine such as puppy pads, towels, or newspaper. I'm wondering if you have done both of those steps?
 
Fleece should wick the wee away I have towels undee my fleece and that is what soaks up the wee.My fleece gets changed twice a week , they are litter trained.I just brush up the poo.My fleece doesn't really smell
 
I have tryed them all, and as far as l am concred green back vet bed is no1, it is easy was and dry, and the ultimat in piggy comfort
A aveage cage size my cost around 8pound on ebay but it will pay for its self
Very quicly

It is avalabal in cage sizes on ebay :tu:
 
How do you wash the fleeces? And how often do you change it? I only use fleece for bedding which I wash in the bath.
 
Shavings are only bad for your piggies lungs if it's pine or cedar shaving or even scented shavings if they are aspen then the shavings will be fine for your fluff balls! :) I use easibed as my litter for my pigs and I put it in shallow cat litter trays with hay and their hay rack above it as pigs eat and poo and the same time:D but you can use shavings or paper based cat litter (make sure it isn't clay or clumping litter) if you put towels and newspaper under your fleece it should hopefully soak some of the urine away. People also make piggie cage liners that are made out of fleece and I think mainly American makers use u-haul and UK sellers use zorb but I could be wrong! But hope this helped a little:)
 
It very much depends what suits you. Everyone's finances, home circumstances and piggies are different. I used to use shavings and hay but ended up changing to Vet bed with an absorbant layer underneath as I had a piggy who was allergic to shavings and a long haired boy who uuse to get them all knotted up in his fur but before that I had used shavings for years.

Down sides of fleece and vet bed is the washing and cleaning but they are good and look nice too, shavings etc are easy to change and fairly cheap so it just depends what suits you! There's no real right/wrong answer as long as what you use is safe for piggies...
 
I used shavings for a few years and then changed to vetbed when one of my piggies became allergic to the shavings. I'll never look back!
 
I used to use shavings, but I was introduced to Snowflake, I haven't looked back. A soft woodchip that is highly absorbent and looks in the smell. :tu:
 
I use both. A pigs natural environment is more like something hay based, so I used wood shavings topped with hay in part of their cage so they can burrow and nest as they want.

The other half is fleece as I personally prefer it, and it doesn't create as much waste to try to shove into the too small waste bin that the council gives us.
 
Mine used to be in a hutch outside on wood shavings, not only could I not stand the mess, the size of the hutch meant that a proper clean was taking over 2 hours (not pleasant when its raining!) and as we approached winter and it gets dark earlier I saw it becoming a problem, didn't consider these things back in June when we bought the piggies! I too did some research and ordered a c&c cage, I use (from ALDI) but I believe pampers make them too "change mat pads" the idea is that if baby does a wee on changing mat these pads soak it up, they are really cheap, couple quid for pack of 10 and I use 2 per clean then put towels down then fleece, its been brilliant and they love it! I got a very large hutch for sale if anyone wants it
 
My boys can't stand fleece or anything that isn't shavings - they turn their nose up at it all!
 
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