Bedding vs Fleece vs Tile

[HermesMama]

Hi all!

Just wanted some opinions on what beddings have worked best for you. Particularly, which ones smell the least and are easiest to clean. I never really wanted to do wood shavings because I felt they would be hard to keep clean/expensive as well as seem messy. I have been using fleece and washing 2x per week. It is a bit smelly but not too bad. My main issue is that the fleece is always covered with hay or toy debris and hard to clean. How do you spot clean your fleece in between washes?

I noticed on a YouTube video someone got tiles measured and cut for the cage. She just wipes up the pee daily and vacuums the poop. Any experience with this?

Thanks!

 

[Snickers]

I use wood shavings and yes they are messy. I tried the fleece a long time ago when I couldn't get shavings. I washed them every other day since I have multiply chins in a cage.

Maybe you can line the cage with 1/2 tiles.

 

[Smidgeyy]

I just vacuum the fleece between changes.

Here is what I did...
I started out with shavings until I moved to my CN cage. For a cage with a deep bottom, I would still prefer to use shavings... But definitely not with the FN/CN. Even with the bass pans, I feel they're still not tall enough to keep the mess in.

After that, I went with fleece. This has been my favorite I believe. Sewing is not my favorite thing to do and I'm not very good at it, so I hated making liners. I also had two cages to cover and while they were easy to clean, it was still rather time consuming. Shaking the fleece out in the cold is also annoying. Summer isn't much better since there are bees and wasps trying to kill me. Overall, I prefer fleece since you can just vacuum it off and it can be washed in the laundry. I did hate how hay and wood bits stuck to it though.

Next was tile. While I absolutely loved how simple it was to clean, I did not get it sealed because I didn't know if I actually wanted to keep it. Moving the cage probably would've resulted in breaking them if I had sealed them as well, so I just didn't bother. This caused urine to run between the tiles(with the chin who had never peed anywhere aside from his litter pan prior to changing to tile). I also found that it was also difficult to get the urine off the top of the tile. The granite tiles were easiest, but the ceramic drove me nuts. Again, it wasn't sealed with anything so I'm sure that would have helped. Clean up was the best part since the hay didn't stick to anything.

Now I have fleece with 1ft tiles in each corner. This allows me to have the pretty fleece but the tiles in the corners pin it down(since when I got the tile I had the bass pans) and help make hay clean up easier. With the bass pans, this is the ideal choice for me. Since I only have one cage now, it really cut down on the time I spend cleaning.

 

[ticklechin]

I have had title cages for almost 12 years, I love it. My cages have wide open doors so I can just sweep the shelves into the garbage can, wipe any pee up. They have built in pee boxes that have shavings in them which for the most part they use, on the one who won't I found which corner he likes and toss a hand full of shavings there which he pees on and I can sweep that out also. No odor.

 

[Cass C]

I decided to put a different bedding on each level of my three level critter nation. I put fleece on the top level, tiles in the middle and shavings on the bottom. They seem to like sleeping on the fleece part, hanging out on the tile part during the warmest part of the day and they play down in the shavings area, which is also where their food, hay cubes, and one water bottle is.

I personally prefer the convenience of shavings to just dump them and be done with it, but I like to give my chinchillas options of what suits then best and none of them are 'hard' to take care of beddings'

 

[IceMaiden]

Shavings are a pain and go everywhere and they quickly fill the dustbin. Our rubbish is only collected every 3 weeks so that was no good. Fleece on the other hand I love. I find it really easy, I like sewing and have a sewing machine so liners don't take long to make. They don't smell at all (though I only have one chin), I sweep them out with a brush and dustpan every morning and that's it, they stay almost spotless until the next morning. Once a week I take everything fleece out, replace with fresh liners and bung everything in the washing machine for 30 minutes which takes about ten minutes tops. By the end of a week the towels inside will be damp-ish but the fleece remains bone dry.

 

[Lucy~Caitlyn]

I'm confused, "the towels inside will be damp-ish but the fleece remains bone dry"
I thought only fleece was a safe fabric, do you have towelling inside your fleece?

 

[IceMaiden]

I'm confused, "the towels inside will be damp-ish but the fleece remains bone dry"
I thought only fleece was a safe fabric, do you have towelling inside your fleece?

Fleece is the only safe fabric, and yes I have the towelling inside out of reach. Fleece liners are generally made by sewing a piece of towel in between two layers of fleece, which in the US is fine as its hot so it dries easily. Over here the unpredictable British weather meant my liners were taking ages to dry, as while fleece dries really quickly, towels don't, which meant a load of damp wet washing everywhere.

I decided to try an experiment, to see if having the fleece and towel as separate pieces makes a difference and it does. The fleece dries very quickly in the airing cupboard and a small piece of towel can be hung up without taking up much room. Also if it doesn't dry it's not a problem I can just use another one instead. The cage I have has shallow plastic trays in it, I lay the piece of towel in it then pull the fleece cover over the tray like a pillowcase, trapping the towel inside firmly out of reach. Any liquid is wicked away from the fleece and absorbed by the towel which is how the fleece stays nice and dry even though the towel isn't.

 

[gsbuickman]

Here's what i have worked out for my lil' chin, Rain'.
Rain is in a bird house that has been converted into a 3 level chilla condo. Her hay dish, pellet food dish and treat dish are on the top floor which is also lined with ceramic tiles. The 2nd floor is also lined with tiles and where one of her ledges is at. The front 1/2 of the bottom floor is covered with tiles which is where her water bottle is at, but the back half is still wire bottom floor which is where she always moves her hide to and sleeps at.

Under the bottom floor is a big pull out tray that I line with newspaper and put pine wood shavings in the back half of. Sometimes i put a little kitty litter down in the back corners of the tray under the wood shavings and that works great as well. Cleanup is fairly simple. I sweep the top 2 floors out into a dustpan daily and dump it in the garbage, then I sweep the bottom floor into the tray below. Every other week i pull the tray out and dump it into a big black trash bag then dump that bag into the garbage can, then I pull the bag out after cleaning and vacuuming the house and toss it in the big garbage can before I take it out to the curb. Then I just put some newspaper back in the tray with some wood shavings and I'm good to go for another 2 weeks. Other then sweeping the tiles out everyday if they need cleaned I pull them out and put them in the bathtub and spray a little Windex on them before I hit them with a scrub brush and rinse them clean and let them air dry.

Before i added all the tile I was filling the whole tray with wood shavings. Now since I'm only feeling half the tray, a big bale of wood shavings from wally mart last rain twice as long and they're only $7.