Can you critique my guinea pig housing, etc, plans - a bit confused!

[CityDweller]

We're rehoming two babies of a rescue guinea pig in a few weeks. I'm getting a bit overwhelmed with all the choices over bedding, housing and whatnot. These are my plans - can you tell me if it sounds ok? They'll be living indoors.

C&C cage (4x2) with coroplast (or equivalent) lining.
I was planning to cover this with aubiose (as we already have this for our chickens) as the absorbent surface. Is this ok, or should I line it with fleece first to make it softer/ nicer for the piggies? Fleece sounds like a bit of a nightmare, tbh, and like it'd need washing all the time. Whereas aubiose is super absorbent and easy to spot-clean and then shovel out for full clean outs.

Then I'll be getting a couple of of house/hidey/bed type things. Do I need to fill these with hay, or will the piggies be happy as they are? If they do need to be filled with hay, should it be the feeding hay or a different type??

Then various 'play' things like tunnels, balls, etc. Plus feeding receptacles (bowls for veggies, etc, hay rack, water bottle).

Is there anything else we need? DD wants a grooming kit!!

I’ve owned guinea pigs my whole life and your set up sounds perfect , I did use fleece (they didn’t really pee on it ) but I’m sure arborise will be fine too , are they boys or girls? One thing to research is boar glue if you are getting boys! FYI it’s very difficult to get out of carpet LOL , I used a whole litter try filled with hay with puppy pads underneath it so they could eat and pee at the same time , also pets at home do like forage packs different flavors and they encourage natural foraging so you could mix them in with the hay? Hope this helps !

Thanks @Limegreentangerine. They're girls.

Do they only pee and poop when they eat, then? I just can't really get my head around all the different bits and bobs they need!

@CityDweller tbh I didn’t really notice them weeing just pooping! Girls are SO LOVELY very cuddly!

We have 2 girls. They have a similar bedding to aubiose (mega zorb - its horse bedding really). I put a layer of this in their cage and then put some hay into their little houses. They also have hay in a springy coil thing that I got from pets at home that seems better than the hay rack they had. Every day I pull the uneaten hay from the springy thing (it's not dirty though as it's not on the floor) and refill it. I put the hay from the springy thing into their houses which they then seem to eat!

Our pigs wee and poo any time, not just when they are eating!

Yes sounds all good. You can put some handfuls of hay under the hidey places, but if you don't you'll probably find they rearrange their hay there themselves anyway, they are messy little things and like to spread hay everywhere! Toys I find mine don't play with really but they love love live to chew so anything they can gnaw on is good. Long haired guineas may need a little comb from time to time but as yours are babies I'd get them used to be being handled and stroked etc first before attempting anything more ambitious, they'll probably be nervous to start with but just be gentle and persist in picking them up every day and they'll get there

We got a couple of rescue baby girls a fortnight ago, and I was grateful for the advice I received on here when I was setting up their cage. I was amazed how times have changed in Guinea pig care since I was a child, and like you was a bit confuddled about whether to go for fleece or disposable bedding like aubiose.

In the end I went with fleece. I invested in thick, quality liners from Kavee and Guineadad, and I have to say I’ve been very pleasantly impressed by how easy and non-smelly it is.

I bought a poover - one of those little hand held vacuum cleaners, and do a quick whiz round with that once or twice a day. Takes five mins. Wee just seems to disappear, presumably into the fleece, but even after a full week it doesn’t feel at all damp. Then I bung the liner in the washing machine and it’s dry overnight.

I bought a laundry bag for the liners, to save my machine from the bits of hay, but I find a vigorous shake of the Kavee one outside over the compost heap actually removes it all, so I don’t bother using it for that one.

Their hay goes in kitten litter trays over a thin layer of wood cat litter, covered over with upturned cardboard boxes with entrances cut into the sides. They LOVE sitting in these. I top up the hay in these every day and clean them out completely twice a week.

They have some other soft fleece hides and a hay rack (that they can’t climb in!) as well.

The piggies are an absolute joy! I’m so glad we got them.

You've sold me on the fleece @VenusClapTrap! And a ''poover', which I'd never heard of! Plus, it seems there's some sort of national shortage of Aubiose, so I would have to find an alternative anyway.

How many liners does one need? Two, presumably? One in use and one in the wash?

Yes, two will do it. If you find they are weeing mostly in one spot, you can buy a couple of extra pee pads to pop on top there and change those more regularly.

Back again with another quick question before I spend quite a lot of ££ on fleece liners!

One place I was reading about all this said that fleece can get quite smelly. Has anyone found that to be the case? Also that they need changing/ washing every 2-3 days. Is that right? If that's the case I may I should just go for something like aubiose (not that I can get hold of it right now, but could do dust-extracted pine shavings in the interim). DH is in charge of the washing and I think he'll be a bit irked if I land him with washing guinea pig fleeces every 3 days on top of all the other washing he seems to be endlessly doing!

I wash mine once a week. No smell. I’ve got the impression that you need to get really good, thick, professionally made liners with a properly absorbent central core. Just using ordinary pet fleece blankets from Aldi doesn’t work. You get what you pay for!

I've had all my fleece liners from ziggys piggies. After one early attempt to make my own

ziggyspiggies.webs.com/

Thanks @VenusClapTrap and @hedgehogger1. I had been planning on getting the ones from KaveeCages, which look to be great quality. But I'll check out the Ziggys ones too.

Fleece liners are fab, we found our bin waste couldn't cope with the amount of shavings we threw away each week.
I brush the hay off with a rubber brush then put everything in a large horse wash bag and in the machine. It'll save your machine from getting clogged with hay. They dry pretty fast but remember to shake them off outside if you're drying them inside over winter or your carpet still gets hay on.