Washing fleece - help! 😬

[Pippin&Ricky]

Good morning! My pigs are 4 and all their life I've been washing their fleeces in a horse bag in the washing machine with no problem at all. We've just moved house and there's a built in washing machine and it does not like the fleeces! The washing machine is great for clothes but it's smaller than my old one and I think the fleeces are too heavy. No matter what cycle I use the fleeces are coming out soaking wet.
Is there another way of washing them? Can you hand-wash in the bath maybe? Trying to think of a way that won't damage the washing machine but also won't take me ages Thank you x

 

[Piggies&buns]

Oh no!
I think handwashing in the bath is not going to be a long term solution - I really don’t think they will come clean enough. I don’t use fleece much (mine live in my shed) but have handwashed a couple of times when I had an issue with my machine for a week and it was an utter nightmare. They water I was rinsing in never ran clear (so there was clearly still urine etc that just wasn’t coming out completely), and no matter how hard I wrung them out, they dripped for a couple of days.

The only thing I can think of is to use multiple smaller pieces of fleece in the cage at one time rather than one large one. Perhaps your machine will cope better. Possibly easier said than done though particularly if you have proper liners.
That’s certainly what I did when I used Vetbed - its heavy so they banged around something awful. I cut it into multiple smaller pieces (but of course cutting vetbed is much easier) to fit the area in their cage and then washed it in two separate loads

 

[Black piggies]

I've not been able to use hay bags as the fleeces come out smelly, might be my washing machine or that I use non bio and 60 degree wash, rather than a stronger laundry liquid. Or maybe I overfill the bag, anyway it doesn't work for me.

In 5 years I've not had a washing machine problem. I remove every bit of hay from the fleece by shaking it and picking bits off by hand, and if there seems a lot of hair I'll brush it off with a rubber scrubbing brush. After every wash, I meticulously wipe the inside of the machine, especially the rubber seal area. The fleeces come out very clean and the machine is OK so far I do have large fleece cage liners plus fleece hideys, fleece blankets for snuggling in etc, which probably balance the load.

 

[YvonneBlue]

Have you checked that the filters on your washing machine are clear, sometimes if the water is not draining away quickly enough this can cause the excess to be retained in your washing.

 

[Bill & Ted]

I once had a washing machine that had real problems when it came to spinning large items or a small amount of delicates. The engineer said it was because the items may be unbalanced in the drum. He also checked the level of the floor it was on because an uneven surface can cause the machine not to spin. I think it was just a problematic machine myself, I have had no further problems with any other washer before or since then. But might be worth checking?

 

[Betsy]

When my washing machine won't spin and leaves my fleeces soaking wet, I take out one of the 2 horse wash bags and put in a couple of bath sheets then put the spin cycle on and it spins. I do have a large washing machine though but when I moved here, I had to wait a few weeks before mine was plumbed in and the previous owner left her old one which was small. I could only fit 1 bag with fleece in it and I had to add a towel or two so the spin cycle worked. Have you tried that?

 

[PigglePuggle]

My washer wouldnt ever spin with fleeces in a bag, so I shake then brush the fleece thoroughly with a rubber curry comb then wash without a bag and put the washer through a rinse cycle and wipe the drum afterwards with paper towels to remove any fur or hay. Balancing the drum can take some practice, combining smaller fleecy items with the larger ones so the weight distributes evenly- often a larger load spins better than a smaller one!

 

[Olivitree]

I find if my washing machine complains about an uneven load and refuses to spin them, I rotate the drum by hand so the fleece is at the top, wait a bit then try again, this allows the water to drain evenly through the fabric. But, it may be its just too heavy for your machine so it may be worth putting half as much in at any one time if you can. You could also try getting an even bigger bag so the fleece has more room to spread out, see if you can get one that matches the size of the drum, as the intention with most washing is you want it evenly distributed around the drum if possible at the point it starts spinning.