Can i use aspen bedding for guinea pigs

This product is available in four different editions. We have 4 cubic feet, 8 cubic feet, cubic inches, and cubic inches packagings. This bedding bag includes natural aspen shavings, processed in a way that eliminates excessive wood debris and dust found in low-quality beddings.

All habitats are supported, meaning that you can use this bedding in aquariums and guinea pig cages. Since this is an aspen bedding, no additional cleaning is required. Small Pet Select also made sure that this aspen bedding is all-natural, which means it contains zero additives such as aromatic oil, which can give a specific smell to your bedding.

Having that neutral smell, your guinea pigs will enjoy burrowing and nesting in it since it promotes their natural instincts. This whole bedding is processed in a way that we only get natural aspen shavings, with no dust and wood debris. This means that the bedding will stay relatively dry and comfortable for your guinea pigs. On top of that, it will decrease the risk of bumblefoot and respiratory diseases.

Once again, we have natural aspen wood shavings, and whenever the product is completely natural, we recommend it. Guinea pigs will react poorly to non-natural products, meaning that you should always buy a product with zero additives, like this one. Its absorbing capabilities are very good but not as good as in fleece beddings. Still, the aspen bedding from So Phresh is great at minimizing odor and absorbing the liquid.

Even if you decide to throw it away, it will degrade in nature, making it safe not only for your guinea pig but also for the environment. This time, they appear on our list with their amazing aspen bedding, made of natural aspen shavings. For one guinea pig, the duration might extend a little bit. Another highlight of this product is its ability to absorb odor and liquid. The manufacturer states that it can absorb up to four times in its weight in moisture.

The versatility of this product extends further, as it can be used for any type of small animal, including hamsters, ferrets, rabbits, chinchillas, gerbils, and of course, guinea pigs.

It is because it is soft, absorbent, and good at odor control. The trouble is, even though different paper bedding brands are essentially made out of the same material, they come in varying qualities and types. This makes it hard for pet parents to figure out which product is most ideal.

Having tried several of these products, I can honestly say that they all vary greatly, and each one has its own pros and cons list. I think we can all agree that a smelly cage makes for an unhappy not to mention unhealthy pet.

Another thing that varies differently between paper bedding brands is the amount of dust. Firstly, bad guinea pig bedding is really dusty. That creates big problems for the health of your guinea pigs, in particular as it can cause allergies or respiratory difficulties.

Secondly, it makes cleaning their habitat an absolute nightmare. Even though this rarely happens, your guinea pig might eat the pieces of paper bedding. This can lead to serious health issues or even death if wet balls form in their tummy. If you notice they love to nibble the bedding, switch to another, safer type of bedding such as fleece or aspen bedding. Using fleece for bedding is still pretty new, however, fleece has gained a huge popularity in the recent years because it makes for a great bedding material.

Also, if the fleece is pre-treated correctly and has a proper under layer, it will be very absorbent. Generally, fleece bedding works out to be cheaper in the long term as it is reusable. That makes it great for the environment too! Although, pet parents do need to invest more time in the whole process of changing bedding with a fleece option. When using fleece, you need a good under layer to absorb the urine and prevent odor. Towels, puppy pads or u-haul pads should do the trick. Unlike pine and cedar shavings which should not be used more about that at the bottom of this post , aspen bedding is a completely safe option, often recommended by the vets.

Aspen is a non-aromatic hardwood so it will not bother your sensitive cavies. However, what you save on money, you pay with in time and energy. There are two options when it comes to aspen bedding — kiln dried shavings or regular shavings, and both are fine to use. Here we are at my all-time favorite type of guinea pig bedding. In my opinion, the unscented version is wonderful, extremely odor absorbent to the point that you will never smell a thing.

No puddles, no wet zones — how amazing is that! Natural paper bedding is a great paper-based material for your guinea pigs, as well as any other small caged animal.

The bedding is really comfortable and, although it is a little pricey, you do get a lot of bedding for your money. Keep in mind that it really expands when you take it out of the packaging.

This paper-based bedding is an excellent option for your guinea pigs — and pet parents too. It is also one of the more affordable alternatives as well — a big bonus! Another fantastic bedding material is paper materials in a granule format. These smaller granules actually provide a really soft and comfortable bedding for your pets.

Usually, the bedding is made from wood fibers that are converted into a soft, highly absorbent bedding and litter. Another great quality paper bedding product for pets.

Well worth a look! While I have no experience with hemp bedding, I decided to add it to the list as many guinea parents are in search of options that are nontoxic, safe for pets, and compostable. If being eco-conscious is something very important to you, then you may want to consider hemp bedding for your furry friends. So, there we have it, some of the best bedding for guinea pigs that will keep your precious piggies cozy, comfy and warm — not to mention happy and healthy!

Now we also need to address the issue with improper bedding materials on the market. Whichever material you opt for, do not use the following bedding types. Did you know that your cavies have a sensitive respiratory system? Some guinea pig owners use kiln-dried pine shavings because most of the oils and phenols are supposedly gone while dried but I still prefer to avoid it since there are many better options out there.

While rodents enjoy nibbling on hay, its drier version — straw — does not make for a suitable habitat liner. Basically, it has no absorbent qualities, so urine and feces would pool in the straw material, creating a horribly unsafe environment to live in.

Highly prone to mold, corn husks make a completely unsuitable bedding material. In the event that these wispy, long, hair-like strands are ingested, it can create intestinal blockages. What makes the litter clump? Lastly, I believe it is essential to quickly mention the importance of keeping cavy cages clean.

Not only does cleaning their habitat once a week — at the very least — keep your fizzy friends happy , but it also keeps them healthy and in tip-top shape. Hi, Thanks for the advices. I agree that all bedding types have pros and cons, so I would add a comment to paper bedding in general: it does have risk!

The piggies can eat the paper pieces that can cause serious problem in the stomach as wet balls. This was told by a guinea pig expert veterinarian. Due to this risk she gave me the advice to avoid paper bedding in general. This vet suggested the use of wood shaving bedding as the best compromise — not perfect but the best choice according to her. Cheers, Gabor. Paper bedding also varies from pig to pig. The other is totally fine, although we will be switching his bedding at his next cage cleaning to prevent another sad situation.

RIP Gizmo. So, when I came home, I had my old bed liner, one of those really soft, cotton, I think, liners my back when just to put down first then your sheets over it. They were designed to keep the sheets in place….. Used wherever they pee the most. You can switch those out mid-week, before you have to change the whole cage liner. And the fleece I got for free from our junk mail. One of which, i think, is from a toys charity or animal protection service, not sure now, but I receive smaller fleece blankets in the mail a few times a year.

I used to save these for a cleaning service I did great for polishing brass and silver. Second suggestion, Use the larger paper roll pellets for the under level of the bedding due to the absorbance, then lay out a double layer of the fleece blankets!!! This is great, and a little less laundry. Pull up the fleece, throw away the under level of paper roll pellets, wash the fleece and back together with a new layer of the paper roll pellets. Thank you for your suggestions!

I prefer puppy pads with kiln dried pine shavings. I spot clean daily and whole cage weekly. I find it relatively easy as I an roll the pyppy pad along with shavings into a largerge garbage bag and hot soapy ater rinse cage bottem.

Always provide hay!! I have a two week old cavy living with her mother in the same cage. The baby just started to have watery diarrhea; coffee colored but, no smell.

The only time you see the diarrhea is when she crawls over the cloth ramp in the cage and it rubs her bottom. I also line the cage with unscented wee wee pads and place paper bedding over it. I have one water bottle I. The cage but, I never see the baby drink from it. Any help would be appreciated. Lettuce can cause diarrhea in guinea pigs, especially if you give them iceberg lettuce which should be avoided as it has no nutritional value and can cause diarrhea. But I would suggest talking to your vet if you are worried.

Also, if the cavy is not only nibbling but also ingesting the blue plastic then you should remove it from the cage because it can cause big health issues in their stomach.

To stop the baby from nibbling, get a couple cotton swabs and a bottle of Ortega thick and smooth hot sauce! Apply just a thin strip by cotton swab of the hot sauce along the whole edge of the pee pad. The smell alone should stop the baby from nibbling the plastic. I am wanting to know if my piggie can eat sugar snap peas both pod and the pea itself? I washed it two different times without using fabric softener but it still seems that it is not absorbent. I spent quite a bit of money purchasing the material and would like to use it.

Any suggestions? For example, humans that work in cedar and pine sawmills have been shown to have higher rates of asthma diagnoses rather than those working in less dusty environments. The same phenomenon happens within our furry friends, but on an even deeper level. Because guinea pigs have much more sensitive noses and respiratory systems than us humans, they are at an increased risk of illnesses, primarily respiratory infections. Living and sleeping on cedar wood shavings will be constantly irritating their body.

The areas of their bodies where they may be in the most danger of illnesses are their nasal passages, throats, and lungs. When these organs are in constant exposure to harmful toxins, that is what leaves them susceptible to harmful bacteria that can cause upper respiratory infections and pneumonia.

By simply breathing in the fumes from the toxins in cedar and pine shavings, harmful substances are passing through the lungs and infiltrating the blood. So much so, that their livers can not handle these needs of detoxification - causing liver failure. At the beginning of my journey of being a pet parent, I was far from perfect. When I first got Peanut my first female guinea pig , I bought a small cage from my local pet store, and pine bedding that one of the sales associates recommended.

Using the pine wood shaving for the first three days with Peanut was one of the many mistakes that I had made as a new guinea pig parent just starting out. As I quickly learned more about guinea pigs, I realized that there is so much information that needs to be researched, considered, and applied to our pets! Thankfully I never tried these types of bedding for my girls Peanut, Tofu and Dumpling. These types of guinea pig bedding are now considered to be a bedding of the past.

A major issue with newspaper bedding is that it contains ink, which when wet starts to disperse. The ink spreading may be harmful for the guinea pigs. Corn cob and straw on the other hand has a problem of molding or has reportedly been eaten by guinea pigs which can cause swelling and intestinal blockage.

But overall t he most common issue is their poor absorbency capabilities. The bedding easily gets wet and dirty, which then provides a perfect environment for mold and bacterial growth. With non-absorbent material, you are essentially exposing your guinea pigs to harm by increasing their risk of bacterial infection. These beds also do not provide an adequate amount of cushion for guinea pigs' sensitive feet. This can result in your guinea pigs being diagnosed with a condition known as Bumblefoot.

In my time spent volunteering at various rescue centers, I have seen a fair amount of Bumblefoot cases. It is extremely painful for guinea pigs, and in serious cases, can lead to amputation. Many vets will also tell you that Bumblefoot is exceedingly common in guinea pigs that do not have optimal bedding options. Our innovative fleece liner design effectively absorbs any liquid quickly into its bamboo layer while simultaneously ensuring nothing leaks through.

Our GuineaDad Liner achieves this by trapping the liquids between the middle layer, and the waterproof backing layer. By providing and ensuring a dry environment for our guinea pigs, this drastically reduces the chance of contracting Bumblefoot.

Photo by Evan Wise on Unsplash. Unlike softwood shavings, Aspen bedding for guinea pigs do not have the dangerous volatile oil. However, aspen is known to be less absorbent than pine. Absorbency is incredibly important, as the main function of proper beddings is to be able to absorb moisture from urine and feces, as we stressed earlier in this blog. Aspen bedding has been proven to have low volumetric absorbency rates.

Kiln-dried pine is a pine bedding that has gone through special treatment to have a weaker pine smell and fewer levels of volatile oil present. But even then, pine is still pine. It will still have a bit of smell and oil that could be harmful especially if there is a lack of ventilation around the cage. Aspen bedding and kiln-dried pine shavings both have limited chemical substance that is considered to be hazardous for guinea pigs. But, due to the nature of wood shavings, they both contain dust.

Even the smallest amounts of dust are proven to be harmful for your guinea pig. Research done by Wirth, Ewaldsson, and Burn shows that beddings must be non toxic and dust free, if they are to be truly beneficial to the animals and their health.

Some brands do a better job than others in removing the dust, minimizing the scent, and so on. Unfortunately for us consumers, the difference in scent is often very subtle, and hard to detect by humans. The amount of dust is often hard to detect because the most dangerous type of dust the kind that irritates and inflames the respiratory system is so small that it is difficult to see with the naked eye. In the simplest of words, you can pretty much consider paper bedding to be the upgraded version of the aspen bedding.

The paper bedding does not have any harmful scents, is more absorbent than wooden shavings, and is also softer on the guinea pig's sensitive feet. However, I want to emphasize that on average, paper bedding outperforms wood shavings. The reason why I said "on average" is because not all of the paper bedding products are created equally.

Some poorly made paper bedding is worse than even the best made aspen bedding. On the other hand, paper bedding is essentially crumbled paper. The filtering process is extremely important here because of the amount of dust. The presence of small particles is especially harmful to the guinea pig's respiratory system. If you decide to go with the paper bedding option, I strongly suggest that you look past the marketing scheme and find out which one really is the best for your guinea pig.

In the next section, I will cover the downfall of paper bedding and why I started using the fleece cage liners for my guinea pigs. Then I will cover why I decided that I had to create the GuineaDad Liner to make sure my girls stay healthy, and live a long lasting happy life. After four to five months of raising Peanut and Tofu I had not yet adopted Dumpling from the rescue at this point , I started to detect some issue with Tofu's health.

Normally guinea pigs secrete white fluid from their eyes, which they use to groom their face and body. One day, I started seeing dried white crust around Tofu's eyes. For the first couple days, I did not think much of it because humans get eye crust in the morning too. But then, the crust did not go away, even if I cleaned her eyes every day. I called the exotic vet close to my house, and visited their office. One week had passed and I started to see something red protruding from the bottom of her eye.

I went to visit the same vet, and he gave me a prescription for an eye drop that I was supposed to apply every day for the next week or so. Another week had passed and I saw zero signs of improvement. I visited two other exotic vets to see what could be the issue. The third vet told me that it was bacterial conjunctivitis. He then prescribed me some antibiotics along with an eye drop.