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Smell and urine help - using fleece, towels and pads!

HowlBear

Junior Guinea Pig
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St. Helens, Merseyside, North West, UK.
Hi everyone, me again!

We're using the fleece method and they're both doing MUCH better now they're being looked after properly and with help from you all!

We've got them on this, base layer of puppy pads, two layers of towels, layer of fleece.

The towels and fleece (even though new fleece) have been completely strip washed and are as absorbent as they're going to get.
I spot clean throughout the day too.

However, they smell, to the point my other half sits here of an evening over 10 feet away and gets waves of it. I can't imagine how the boys feel!

Every morning I take everything out, towels and fleece are washed, pads thrown, and clean, dry, fresh everything goes in.

The cage ends up smelly before the kids go to bed at 7pm.
I'm seriously considering doing twice daily whole cage changes because I don't know what else to do.

Hay tray gets changed too, which I tried with puppy pads, newspaper, towel, but it ends up SOAKED, even through the puppy pads! This is 2 guinea pigs, surely they can't out wee a dog!

ANY suggestions are appreciated because I know they're very sensitive to smell, so if us rubbish nosed humans are finding it intolerable, they can't be happy either!

Hope everyone has a good day today x
 
How big is the cage?
 
If you wash the fleece at 60 degrees, it shouldn't smell afterwards.
 
It smells fine once its washed and dried, it's when they're peeing on it that it stinks. Or is the smell sort of re-hydrated when they pee?

It could be that they just need changing more regularly or the pad underneath isn't absorbent enough but if the fleece is dry it will be doing it's job underneath. Mine are getting a little whiffy on the day after changing so I change them the following day, if I leave changing them a further day they absolutely stink.

I would wash the fleece at 60 degrees regardless, to kill bacteria and mold spores. It might make a difference to the smelliness if not fully cleaned of bacteria in the previous wash.
 
Try adding some vinegar to the conditioner section when going to wash them.
 
I’d say you are overdoing the absorbent stuff. Towels get soaked but don’t really dry so the smell persists. Try just using the puppy pads and see if that makes a difference, it will at least narrow it down. I use a mattress protector as my absorbent layer. The fleece itself has no absorbency, the wet drains through into the absorbent layer but acts as a one way barrier.

I do daily sweeps and hay tray changes but the fleece can go a week or so before getting smelly.
 
Oh and ditch the stuff in the hay tray. It will just trap odours. Put a layer of something in the bottom to make it easier to clean if you like but they don’t seem to care about soggy hay.
 
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