hayloft & bedding help please

[claire8234]

Hi everyone

my two boars are in a 2x4 C&C with a 2x1 hayloft (pictures on page 14 of C&C gallery).

The bottom has a fleece cage liner which I love but I am having trouble with the hayloft. It creates so much mess that I am considering re doing it so any help and suggestions would be appreciated

They are currently on megazorb as they tend to wee the most in the hayloft and they can be pretty pongy. Its very absorbant which is great as they aren't sitting in wet bedding and it doesn't smell, but I am having trouble containing it, so it is all over the fleece downstairs and over the bedroom floor - yuk!

I can't use fleece liners in the hayloft because they would be soaked through in less than a day. I have tried using a corner litter tray but they still pretty much pee everywhere in the loft so it makes no difference.

How does everyone keep the bedding in the loft and not over the whole room?!

I had thought of getting some more correx and making a tray with higher sides and having a small raised edge on the side where the ramp goes to stop it all falling out - could my piggies can hop over this when they go upstairs?

OH is going to make a new ramp out of wood and add sides to it so at least any bedding wont fall out the grids onto the bedroom floor but I need something to stop the bedding falling out the tray when they go up and down the ramp.

He did suggest taking out the correx and using a cat litter tray as this has raised sides all the way round but my piggies only eat hay out the hay rack and I don't think it would help keep the bedding in when they kick it about. I would like to keep using megazarb as I have found it to be the most absorbant and affordable bedding but just need a way of keeping it upstairs!

Any ideas, suggestions etc or pictures would be appreciated

Thank you

 

[claire8234]

Anyone??

 

[lissie]

You could make the wall of the loft higher or switch to a pellet type bedding. I've been using Purina Yesterday's News and didn't have any problem with them kicking out. It's a US brand and I don't know what's the equivalent in UK.

Here are some pics of my old hay lofts.

 

[Dindypig]

I have made the hay loft tray out of correx and the sides are three squares high up the grids. The wooden ramps have sides on them for the Piggies benefit but I find that the hay only spills down the ramp a little way.
The two lots of hay that you can see under the hayloft are Twisty balls of hay hung on the sides for general downstairs nom noms.

 

[Teejay]

I use these cat litter trays from Pets at Home:
http://www.petsathome.com/shop/litter-tray-by-clean-n-tidy-26666

They're big enough and deep enough to hold plenty of hay and the piggies love having a rummage aound in the hay. I line mine with newspaper and then, twice a day, I just roll up all the left over hay and the soaking wet newspaper and replace with fresh paper and hay.

I find that very little hay ends up on the fleece - the lip around the edge of the tray seems to help with that - even with 4 very active piggies jumping in and out of the tray constantly.

Tracey x

 

[Rachel WD]

I tend to just put newspaper down in the hay loft as they would kick the megazorb all over the place. Sometimes I put a bit of megazorb in the back corners where they tend to wee more, this doesn't get as far as the ramp.

 

[Rachel WD]

I tend to just put newspaper down in the hay loft as they would kick the megazorb all over the place. Sometimes I put a bit of megazorb in the back corners where they tend to wee more, this doesn't get as far as the ramp.

 

[claire8234]

I have tried just using newspaper and it gets soaked really quickly, as they spend a lot of time up there they were sitting on wet paper which was horrible.

I had thought of finding a cat litter tray the same size as the hay loft (or thereabouts) an putting this in.

It only gets kicked out when they run up and down the ramp which was why I thought of raising the correx on the edge where the ramp goes :{