Piggy eating drybed/vetbed

[Helen C]

Hi everyone,

When I adopted my two girls, I decided to try fleece -- I used drybed/vetbed with my previous piggy but I found it a bit of a hassle to wash. I though fleece would be easier. Turns out, I hate fleece; I find it smells after about 24 hours so I need to change it a lot more often, and even worse, it sometimes gets wet at the end of the first day (I washed it several times before use, and use towels underneath, plus a puppy pad where they eat their hay).

So I tried to switch back to drybed but when I did that, I saw one of my girls eating it (they're only four month old and this little girl will eat anything, including the towels I put on the floor during floortime, my shoes, my socks, my woolen clothes...).
So I put them back on fleece but have I mentioned that I hate fleece? As in, I'm losing the will to live here?

My question is, if you're using drybed/vetbed, did your pigs try to eat it? Did they keep doing it or did they stop once they realized it wasn't food?
Can they get sick if they eat too much of it?
When I tried, I only left the drybed from morning to evening, I didn't dare leave it for the night since she was munching on it and we wouldn't be around to check what she was doing. Should I just stick to it?

Thanks for any advice!

 

[Nassala]

I use a fleece cover over vet bed. It stops them chewing it, and it still wicks the pee away quickly so the fleece doesn't get soaked. If you just tuck it over or weigh it down on top of the vetbed it will be quick and easy to change if it gets smelly. As for washing, I just shove it all in a horse bag and it's easy!
As a general rule, you want piggies not to eat anything that is not food, their insides can be delicate. As a ray of hope often piggies grow out of the chew anything phase, my Flump chewed the correx incessantly (if I couldn't hide it under fleece well enough) when I got her but stopped around the time she turned one.

 

[Helen C]

Thanks, I'll try that. Do you put towels underneath the vet bed?
It's true that by the time we switched my previous piggy to vet bed, he was at least one and a half. He seemed intrigued the first day but he didn't try to taste it.

 

[Nassala]

I actually sewed fleece covers, like a duvet cover. So there's fleece on top and below, but I don't think that the lower layer is necessary. It never seems to be wet or stained anyway, so I think the vetbed on it's own is probably good enough! I also do the same with waterproof mattress toppers and fleece for when the vetbed is in the wash. It doesn't last as long before needing changed but it's way cheaper.

That's my current set up fleece/vetbed wise.

 

[Helen C]

Thanks again, I'll definitely try putting vet bed at least where they eat, for the time being. Hopefully, in a few months, they'll have stopped trying to eat anything they see.