Shavings or fleece... or shavings AND fleece?

Autonerd

Autonerd

Junior Guinea Pig
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Hi all -- Thanks again for help on my post about reducing piggie smell. What I learned is that we need a better cleaning schedule w/ more frequent/smaller cleanings rather than less frequent/bigger cleanings.

I was reading about fleece and am wondering about this. Right now we have a Coraplast liner, which we top with mattress pads and, on top of that, a layer of wood shavings. We like the shavings because they smell nice (for a short time, anyway) and we have horses so we buy them anyway. (We also free-feed our hay, btw.)

I was reading about fleece -- should I consider another layer between the shavings and mattress pads? It does seem like cleaning the shavings out of the fleece would be a pain, but if there's something we can use to give the pads a helping hand, all the better. And while I love my shavings (and piggies live on them at LAGPR!) I'm wondering if there's any reason to move away from them. Someone did talk to me about cardboard liners, but I thought that was more about protecting the coraplast (and I could be wrong, often am).

Thanks!
Aaron (for Oreo and Harrison)
 
Fleece is a bedding in its own right and shavings is a bedding in its own right. You would not put shavings on top of fleece. It would be use of one or the other.
You could have a fleece area and a shavings area and then put the hay in the shavings area but it is going to be dragged around and would still be a an utter nightmare to get shavings out of fleece and definitely when purposefully put on top.
You can use a rubber brush to clean off fleece but that is more for bits that have got on it.

I don’t use fleece as mine live outdoors (I have done on occasion during an hot summer) but I have blankets to cover my piggies in winter which are covered in hay which won’t come off and they don’t even matter as they are just covers not bedding!

What I do with mine (who have coroplast liners) is a layer of newspaper and then the shavings on top, hay on top of that. I then remove the wet areas daily. Then at full clean time the whole lot is removed. Coroplast is cleaned and then the cage refilled. There is no messing about with that! Scoop it up and job done!

Some people use washable human incontinence pads or puppy pads under shavings (again either disposable or reusable). Shavings don’t stick to them in the same way as it does to fleece.
 
Hi autonerd, this is what I do and it seems to work for my piggies:

1. coroplast base in my C&C cage
2. a layer of noodle / chenille bath mats that cover the whole base
3. in a 2x1 section I have a coroplast container which is their haybox/litterbox. In there, I put down a few layers of plain newsprint (so their wee doesn't make the hemp stick to the bottom) and then a thick layer of hemp bedding (like your wood shavings)
4. In the rest of the cage, I have laid down my pee pads which are fleece + zorb absorbent layer + waterproof bottom.

This works quite well, they don't really drag the hemp around the cage too much, so the spot cleaning of my fleece pee pads is quite easy.
 
I have human washable incontinence pads and fleece liners. I feel it works best for me and my piggies. I clean them out once a week during the spring/summer/autumn and twice a week in the winter as they live in the garage and the fleece gets a bit damp if I leave it for a week. They, obviously, have unlimited hay.
 
I second the rubber/silicone bristle hand brush for removing hay from fleece.
Personally I switched to fleece for 2 reasons. My skin got quite irritated by the wood shavings but more importantly, Sir George used to sneeze frequently until the switch.
 
I have two areas in my guinea pigs' cage. One is fleece. A polar fleece sandwich with zorb in the middle and some noodle bath mats on top as extra protection (under beds and in hides). The other is newspaper and hay in litter trays with a hay rack (old magazine rack). They use their litter trays a lot because that is where they mainly eat. It is also the covered end of the cage so they feel secure there.
 

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Thank you all! This is really helpful. The boys don't seem to have an issue with shavings so I think we will stick with those. Interesting idea about dividing the cage into zones... they really do see to use the whole thing, but I have one of my two trays in the hide and they seem to sleep on both sides, so I might move the other tray there. Second tray is now up front where I used to put hay... but now we free-feed hay in greater quantities so I don't know that it makes much difference, and it doesn't seem to make my more-often cleanings any easier/tougher.
 
I have half the C&c cages as fleece with an incontinence bed pad cover thing under that, and the other half is shavings where all the hay goes onto.
I have found that the shavings and hay don't get stuck all in the fleece permanently and they come off with a hand brush for spot cleans or a rubber brush which I use before putting them in the washing.
I put the fabric bedding and fleece beds into equestrian zip up bags and then put that in the washing machine so any bits stay in the bag.
This has worked well for me for over 2 years :) you can only try and see what works :)
 
I was so inspired by this thread that I created a blog post about spot cleaning! I put some pictures and videos of how I set everything up and how I do spot cleaning.

The Ultimate Guide to Spot Cleaning Your Guinea Pig Cage (in Just 2 Mi

I also have two "zones" - one for the bedding and hay where they graze a lot and it's covered with a large fleece forest; then the rest of fleece pee pads. Thanks to everyone who responded to OP, it's great getting lots of ideas.

**disclaimer: in my video, I have golden barley straw in my litterbox, this is for bedding, not for eating. But the official advice of Guinea Pig Forum is not to use straw as bedding. In my blog I mention various type of bedding eg hemp, wood shavings etc**
 
Great video F and F really love guinea pig clean out vids! I am going to go for shavings when I go away for the weekend/a few days to make spot cleaning easier for whoever will be looking after them.

I find a covered hay area with trays to be so well used and really helpful to have the magazine rack to eat hay from. They do pull a fair bit of hay out of the rack but as long as I refill twice a day there is always plenty for them.
 
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