The piggies and their brand-new fleece! :D

[typicalfemale]

My fleece arrived today from piggybedspreads.com (for reference this is a size "medium" cage from guineapigcages.com and the bedspread fits perfectly with a little looseness on the side but when it shipped, they sent an e-mail that after a few washes there'll be 3-5% shrinkage so it's supposed to be a little big). I've only used aspen before and I

Comments

[zebrallama]

Hooray for fleece!

We use water dishes instead of water bottles. Apparently some piggies won't drink out of a dish so YMMV, but if they will use a dish then it saves some problems like bottles potentially clogging up. Plus dishes are really easy to top up. We give them two small dishes overnight or if they're on their own for a long time, and one otherwise (for three piggies).

[typicalfemale]

I am SO HAPPY with the fleece already, I don't know why I didn't get it sooner. We tried some cheap fleece for a "test run" but it felt sticky and gross cause it wasn't meant for piggies so we threw it in the wash and gave up after one try. I am SO happy I tried this one cause I was getting so sick of shoveling aspen with a dustbin. Not to mention the fact that I was losing hay because it'd be buried in the aspen and the cage never looked clean after the first day. I love it for the reduction of effort for more play time, and the piggies love it because it's one gigantic cuddle cup, haha

[zebrallama]

All our three piggies are rescues, and one of them had a water dish when she was at the place we rescued her from. Not sure about the others: they may have started on bottles and learned to use a dish.

[ms_hecubus]

Lixit are all prone to leaking. Something in the design. It's not such a worry on aspen or paper, but on fleece it's a pain.

I have almost all Petco bottles and they've been in use a year or more. Maybe you just had a dud the first time?

[typicalfemale]

Do you have the Petco bottle that has the plastic fish inside that tells you where the water level is? We had that kind and it was weird, like the metal ball just gave out and it started gushing. I read on the site that they had a bunch of broken ones sent out. The Lixit was our dog's Lixit when we used to crate her because she's spill her water dish, but now that she has free reign of the apartment when we're gone, we gave it to the piggies. If you haven't had any trouble with your Petco bottle then I think I should get that, cause it was good until it just stopped completely. I also wanna try the dish thing that zebrallama mentioned cause my hay dish is so small that the hay just sits on top of the dish and that dish pretty much serves zero purpose now, haha.

[ms_hecubus]

All of mine have turtles inside, but yeah, they're the same basic thing. I have a bunch of 16 ounce ones and they've all held up fine so far.

[zukosphoenix]

The fleece is a brilliant idea and I'm definitely going to look into getting one to see how it works, for all the reasons you listed. Thanks for the information!

[typicalfemale]

Yeah the fleece is so awesome. It's been a few days and they're still coming out so much more than they used to. It's so easy to clean the poop and the pee really soaks through (that was my biggest concern, exactly how absorbant the pad underneath would be - but so far, it's dry as a bone!)

If you order from piggybedspreads.com just know that when they say it takes 6 weeks to come, it really does, so the only thing that sucked was the waiting period. I ordered mine July 12 and it came August 31. But it's worth it and they're well made and the company is small but be aware it takes a while. I know some places say 6 weeks just to be sure but this one really did take that long because they have to custom-make them by the size you need and the colors you choose.

[great_dame]

FYI, Home Goods has a pet section, now, and they get in these stuffed blanket mats that are typically used to go in a dog crate - the products like that are normally $40-50 in a pet store but at Home Goods (which is a resale chain) they're $16 and often lower once marked down on clearance.

My guinea popcorns all over the one I bought and does NOT regard the material as a waste area. I only have to wash it every 12 days or so. So I am just saying that I also go for the "cloth" bottom and will NEVER use any shavings, again!

[typicalfemale]

I've never been in Home Goods but I googled it and it looks like there's one in my town. I should have looked into it but I'm so anti-DIY because I suck at anything I try to do myself - I didn't even make my own C&C, haha. But that would have been easier! I fell like a sucker for the patterns at piggybedspreads though. But if I need to replace the bottom for any reason I'm gonna do that instead of re-ordering. Or maybe I can put the blanket mat under the water bottle at least, to stop leakage. More protection is better

[miss_tabitha]

For the AC issue - is it such that you could put something over the vent to redirect the airflow? Not stop if from entering the room but divert it so it's not hitting the water bottle. Is it the air flow or the vibration from the compressor coming on? Want to make sure I'm understanding things.

[typicalfemale]

Unfortunately we can't change the airflow, it's hard to explain but basically our kitchen is connected to our living room, and the piggies are against the far wall where there's the kitchen, then the laundry room, then their cage right after that which is against a side and back window as you walk from the kitchen to the living room. The master vent is about 2 feet wide on the wall before the kitchen. Then there are tinier vents that go throughout the other rooms that are near the ceiling. The pigs are as far away from the main vent and the small vents as possible so it's either the air that's circulating around (we all have massive AC systems with every room the same temp cause it's South Florida with hardcore heat