Smelly fleece

T

Trillis

Junior Guinea Pig
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We switched to fleece a few weeks ago. I have made liners that are fleece, zorb, fleece, which I put on top of a towel. Its a single large towel but 3 liners in the hutch. The liners are doing a great job of absorbing wee, but I am struggling with the smell.

For example, I put fresh, washed liners in the cage today at 3pm. When I got home at 7pm, the room stank. It's horrid. I normally try not to change all the liners at once, but did today. But we've been struggling with the smell for over a week because its been getting gradually worse. I started washing them more often (every other day) but don't know if this is making it worse. It's certainly not helping!

Can anyone advise?
 
I'm in the same boat. Cannot cure it for the life of me. I layer the fleece ontop with hay. Makes it slightly better
 
Have you tried adding a bit of vinegar to the wash? I use this when I wash the fleece tunnels add the vinegar to the fabric softener bit in the drawer. . Also there could be a build up of detergent in your machine. Try doing a hot wash with nothing in the machine with no detergent added and see if it's all bubbly or not if it is there is a build up of detergent.
 
I am having the same problem with both my piggy couples. I alternate with fleece and vetbed, but still have the same smell. I will try vinegar, but doesn't it rot the rubber on the washing machine?
 
It hasn't so far and I've been using it for a couple of years. You don't use loads of it just a bit in the fabric conditioner drawer. I use white vinegar.
 
Fabric and fleece helps absorbs moisture but sadly does little to nothing about the smell compared to bedding. I use a bit of both and put bedding inside a cat litter box and the littlebox serves as the cafeteria/toilet area. It also controls the hay mess to within the litterbox
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The mess outside the litterbox is mainly from the pellets and veggies cuz my boar just likes to eat those outside (This is a 2 days worth of mess btw, poop is also inside the litterbox since he mostly eats hay inside it)
 
I also use hay trays at each end of the cage and fleece in the middle. A lot of wee goes into the hay trays as that is where they mainly eat.

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I use fleece & I use my own liners that I make... I do use smaller liners under their hay tray as this is where most of their wee goes.. and i change these probably every 2 days ..... to be honest I don't get much of a wee smell very often at all ... I wash at 60 degrees with Aldi non bio wash powder and always add white vinegar... good luck!
 
I put an extra fleece liner on top and change it everyday. I used equine pellet bedding in my litter trays. It helps A LOT with smell. Unfortunately, my boys pee and poo where they sleep. Lol. I also wash with vinegar. I just change the wet stuff everyday.
 
Was going to ask this question tonight how often u change fleece. It wasn’t on 24 hours yesterday and soaking under it. I’ve put put absortabnt cloths under it now amen change the pee pads pretty much12-24hours I’ve booght loads
 
My piggies use their hay trays as their bathrooms, so much of pee and poo goes in to their bathroom hay trays. I clean out their bathroom/hay trays often and I don't have issues with smell. Mine are indoor piggies.

Here is my boy Finn's personal hay tray and bathroom. He is really good about using his bathroom. I hand wash all his fleece bedding every 4 days and there is very little pee on his fleece bedding. After washing, I also soak them in vinegar water to kill all the germs.

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When I very first used fleece I just piled hay on top of it but this very soon became very wet and very smelly.

Not long after I changed to using cat litter trays with bedding in the bottom (to absorb the pee) and tons of hay in the top. This really helped to combat the pee smell. I just clean these out once a day.

I change my fleece once per week and it only really smells on like day 6. So they do pretty well with the hay trays.
 
Hank288 said:
When I very first used fleece I just piled hay on top of it but this very soon became very wet and very smelly.

Not long after I changed to using cat litter trays with bedding in the bottom (to absorb the pee) and tons of hay in the top. This really helped to combat the pee smell. I just clean these out once a day.

I change my fleece once per week and it only really smells on like day 6. So they do pretty well with the hay trays.
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I’ve just got a cat litter tray from Poundland’s it’s really small so perfect for piggies

What bedding do you use? Found any that doesn’t attach its self to the fleece
 
Mine are pretty good at not spilling any bedding onto the fleece. They have a ton of hay in the tray so never eat it down enough to get to the bedding.

I use snowflake softchip though as it is more absorbant and better then shavings. Aubiose is very similar though and much more widely available.
 
I line my plastic hay trays with newspaper then some of that egg carton bedding (used to used Fitch but the price went up ) this is proving to be a good alternative.. then hay on top... this gets changed once a day (used to do it twice a day but now i have to have 2 hay trays i just do it once).
 
artcasper said:
I use fleece & I use my own liners that I make... I do use smaller liners under their hay tray as this is where most of their wee goes.. and i change these probably every 2 days ..... to be honest I don't get much of a wee smell very often at all ... I wash at 60 degrees with Aldi non bio wash powder and always add white vinegar... good luck!
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What did you use for your inner layer?
 
I use polar fleece on top of inco pads. I was the fleece every other day at 60 degrees to kill bacteria and spores. My fleece doesn’t smell.
 
Do you know what the icontinece pads are made of? Ive found some the perfect size made bamboo terry
 
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