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bedding alternitives?

cornfish

New member
ive been looking for aspen shaveings for my rodents for a wile and the largest bag i can find is 2 and a half square feet for 15$ witch dosent realy seem worth it(especialy for the rats)a local feed store has something called horse comfort witch are pellets made of "100% wood pyproducts"it dosent have a lot of dust, and its only $4 for about 40lbs has anyone used it or some other pelleted bedding for rats/mice? iam kind of worried they wont like it because its hard to walk on and they cant make nests out it, i would give them some paper to use though, and that it wont be that absorbant. but so afr its the cheepest stuff with the least dust(i think)and i figure its better than pine, anyone have an opinion on it?
 
Many types of pelleted bedding work fine for rodents, pelleted bedding tends to do the best on odor control.
The only problem is that many of them sold for horse stalls I have found break down into a fine sawdust. Talk about dusty, it becomes pure dust.

They also tend to be made from pine, which may or may not be semi-toxic to rats and snakes depending on who you listen to.

I'm currently using "Equi Litter" which has a distinct pine smell and in one tub, they had pushed it up against the water bottle sipper and drained the entire bottle. The pellets expanded into dust which filled the entire tub. The one poor pregnant mouse was stuck on one side with a hole dug out and barely any space below the wire top.

I now use a lot less of it and pushed the water bottle sipper tubes higher up so that will hopefully not happen again. I won't be buying Equi-Litter again, it breaks down too quickly.

Other brands such as "Woody Pet" worked much better.

Best so far was Yesterdays News cat litter, which is recycled newspaper pellets. It's a bit expensive, at $12-$13 for about 30 lbs.
 
also make sure the shavings don't contain cedar as this is harmful to them. i have horses myself and can assure you that you will find it very hard to find shavings other than pine as it is the safest and cheapest non -toxic (to horses) wood for horses.

i use shredded newspaper for my mice and they have done fine on it. it soaks wet up well and i only change it twice a week. i do put vanilla extracts in the water to try and keep the smell down and it really works. a

also i think it depend on the size of the enclosure to what bedding you use.

one of the best bedding i have ever used (but can not get it anymore) is the offcuts of tea bags. it is super absorbant and smells of tea. it also holds heat quite well so the mice and rats tend to like it for nesting.


good luck in finding something.

lee :cheers:
 
well so far iam comming up with nil on my bedding/food search. no store seems to have woody pet pellets, bigger bags of aspen or even kiln dried pine, so i think i may give the horse pellets a try with the rats and see what heppens, i have some mice on aspen but i can still hear some sneezing from some dos it matter? this bring me to another question how do you cleen the mice tubs when they have babies?
 
Petco, Petsmart, and WalMart around here have a bedding called Soft-Sorbant. It's wonderful! That's all I use for the guinea pigs and mice I have.
 
ive seen that soft sorbant at petsmart but its about 11$ for the smaller bag and i think $20 for the larger one.

flagg i actualy found a number in the phone book to a woody pet office/ distributer near me but its been disconected and no store carries it have they gone out of bisness mabie?

i did find one store that sells bags of aspen by a commpany called nepco, the 2.5 cub foot bags are $15 but iam not sure if its compresed or what but i think i will get a bag if its good quailitey and see how long it lastes.
 
I've used Nepco, it's good quality. I've used Nepco chipped Aspen, which is identical to Sani Chips, and shavings. The shavings themselves were a bit larger than I'm used to, but it worked.
 
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