Guineapigs - what am I doing wrong?

[tellmesomethingtrue]

8 months of the year, my pair of boars live happily in an outside hutch with free reign of the lawn.

4 months of the year, the pair come inside and live in a C&C cage.

When I read up about how to keep the cage clean, most advise to do a daily spot clean and then change bedding once a week. This worked fine for their outdoors hutch.

My problem is that inside, even by the next day from changing their bedding, it seems to be covered in urine and poo everywhere. I use newspaper all over the bottom of the cage, with a thick layer of sawdust (from pets at home) over the top. This then usually ends up covered with hay as the pigs pull it out their hay rack.

They have their own tray and hide with newspaper covered in the sawdust too. Everything just seems to get soaked all the way to the newspaper which makes it smell. How can people say they change it just once a week?

What am I doing wrong? Are the fleece linings or bath mats better at soaking up the wee? Is the newspaper the problem?

My guineapigs seems to urinate everywhere, despite not having any food or hay in or around their sleeping area as I know they wee when they eat.

They ignore the designated 'toilet area' as they just tend to lay in this instead.

What bedding do you use?
How often do you change their bedding?
How often do you clean out their hutch?
Do fleece linings just become soaked in urine?

Please help me and my pigs!!

Ex show skinny pig breeder and DEW breeder here.

ignore posts that say shavings are bad, they are not if you get the small flake/snow flake. Sawdust is bad as it’s so fine. No need to use straw at all just plenty of hay. Fleece liners are terrible for the environment and I wish they had never been invented. I assume your CC is lined with plastic corex/sheet for easy cleaning?

do you have any horse/farm supply places near you? Megazorb bedding is excellent at holding onto the smell of boars urine . I used to use that as all of mine lived Indoors and it really helped. But If your boars are fully coated is there a reason they can’t stay outside all winter? As children we never had any issues at all with keeping ours outside and mum just used to use the old quilts/bedding to initiate the hutches and cover in clear plastic. Plenty of hay and they were fine, we never lost one due to the cold. It helps to supplement dry/raw oats to increase calories to provide body warmth over winter when being kept outside.