Smells

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T&A

Junior Guinea Pig
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Hi,
I find that the room my guinea pigs are in smell quite badly, especially when i disturb the cage with cleaning.
Anyone else experience the same and does anyone have any tips.

I’ve seen a whole thing about deodorising sprays with vinegar water and basking soda and wondered if this was safe to use on my fleece between washes to help with freshness?
 
There shouldn’t actually be any need to use any such sprays.

What sex are your piggies and how often do you change your fleece? It is important to spot clean daily but cleaning too much with boars can make the smell worse as they then scent mark more.
How big is your cage?
What is your absorbent layer under the fleece?
Do you use smaller fleece pee pads in high traffic areas?
Do you remove wet hay every day?
Generally, what is your cleaning routine?
 
When I clean my boars out I change the main fleece one day and the pee pads and beds the next. If you completely change everything in one go the will scent mark to make the cage theirs again.
 
I have boars.
I change their fleece roughly every 5 days, spot clean 3x daily, their absorbent layer is puppy pads. My cage is 160x60. I remove wet hay every other day roughly but don’t find that’s the smells. On my fleece i end up with ‘poo dust’ which i try my best to sweep up but when u disturb it it goes in the air and the room stinks!
 
Spot cleaning any more than this isn’t maintainable for me and shouldn’t really need to be the case. I don’t know what i can do to reduce smells
 
What kind of fleece are they on? Spot cleaning 3x daily is actually more than the average GP owner (or me at least, who does it morning and evening) so it is quite strange that you are having such an issue with it.

Do you have a window or any kind of ventilation in the room they are in? Also how many boys do you have.
 
I have 2 boys, they are just on standard pet fleece from Amazon. It is wicking properly and everything, I don’t understand. The room they’re in has ventilation so I open the doors when I can but it doesn’t stop the smell
 
This is their cage now after stop cleaning it roughly 2 hours ago. When I clean this up it makes a horrible smell which lingers for ages
 

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:agr: With Piggl - Three times a day is more than most people spot clean

I have four boars. Mine are bedded on disposable bedding and hay. The wet disposable bedding doesn’t smell, but the wet hay does. I spot clean once a day and by that I mean removing wet areas and poops which are on top. All other poops fall through the hay and are cleared out at the once a week full cage clean.

I don’t find my piggies poops smell that bad at all - certainly not that crumbling them makes the space smell.
 
It seems to be a different smell to the ammonia smell though. I smell the ammonia in their litter box and puppy pads when it needs changing but this smell is definitely not the ammonia smell. It smells like poo 🤷‍♂️
 
Could there be something in their veg diet which is causing it to be so bad?
 
i don’t know i give them cucumber lettuce pepper and sometimes fennel and coriander. This smell has been going on for longer than I’ve been feeding coriander. I feed lots of wet veg as my vet told me to do so and my guinea pigs are on a low calcium diet after a previous bladder stone disaster
 
Sounds like a normal diet so possibly not that.

I feed a lot is grass with some cucumber, lettuce, pepper and coriander daily. In quite high a quantity as I also feed a wet diet
 
so do you think i could use some sort of deodorising spray/ something?
If so what could you suggest?
Thank you:)
 
I find it hard to recommend that you use a spray. Most would not be recommended.
In most cases of cage smells, it comes from wet hay which should be removed daily. That usually solves the issue. What you are reporting seems to be different though and as I say my boars poops don’t smell bad at all and certainly not enough to make the whole space smell.
The only smells I notice is on clean out day when the two teenagers go on a scent marking spree!

Vinegar and water mix can be used as a mild disinfectant, I’m just not sure that using it to spray fleece is going to do what you think it is.
Don’t use baking soda - Anyone Heard Of This Before?

You certainly should not spray anything while the piggies are in the cage and don’t put them back in if there is any damp on the fleece caused by a vinegar spray.
If the vinegar does mask their boarly smells then they will just scent mark even more so it may cause even more smell.
 
Ok. I already use water and vinegar as a pet disinfectant. I put baking soda in a pot near their cage to help with smells which seems to help a bit - is this dangerous or is it the direct contact which is dangerous?
I’ll make an effort to keep up with removing wet hay and, about the smelly poops i don’t know what to do. I have tried to stop veggies and start again but this didn’t help and i need to feed them wet veggies as the vet told me this is a must to help with the bladder stone issues.
 
T&A said:
Ok. I already use water and vinegar as a pet disinfectant. I put baking soda in a pot near their cage to help with smells which seems to help a bit - is this dangerous or is it the direct contact which is dangerous?
I’ll make an effort to keep up with removing wet hay and, about the smelly poops i don’t know what to do. I have tried to stop veggies and start again but this didn’t help and i need to feed them wet veggies as the vet told me this is a must to help with the bladder stone issues.
Click to expand...

I don’t know to be honest - it’s just not something I’ve ever needed to do or look into.

They actually won’t take in much additional water by feeding the veg physically wet. It’s more that having a good proportion of grass and veg itself can help introduce a lot of moisture and therefore frequent urination.
 
Yes that’s what the vet wanted, frequent urination so calcium crystals can’t settle and turn into stones.
As for the pongy smell in the pig room, i guess I’ll just have to carry on until i find a solution, unless someone else has one 🤞
Thanks though:))
 
I know what you mean, we've had several sets of boars and we've had an issue with smelly fleece.

Where is your hay? In my experience, the worst smells come from where the hay is sitting, partly because they poop and pee there more than elsewhere, and partly because the hay messes up the wicking - it can actually cause the fleece to wick the other way and gather moisture up into the hay!

In our current setup we use litter trays for the hay, with a layer of compressed wood pellet cat litter underneath, which gets changed out twice a week. It really helps a lot. You can't stop boars being smelly sometimes, but with this arrangement it's lot less bad than we've had before.
 
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