The Best Guinea Pig Bedding
Once you've chosen a cage or hutch, it's important to choose suitable guinea pig bedding to go with it. This will provide your pet a comfortable, clean, and healthy surface to live on.
In the wild, guinea pigs live in environments which are rich in soil and vegetation. These provide an excellent natural surface for them to live on. When kept as pets, it is important that your pigs are given a bedding that closely mimics the essential properties of this natural bedding.
The first purpose of guinea pig bedding is to provide a soft surface for them to walk on. This helps to protect their feet from damage, keeping your Cavies more comfortable.
Secondly, bedding helps to keep your animals warm. In the wild they love to gather leaves and undergrowth to build a cosy cocoon-type bed. A good substitute bedding material will allow them to do the same in their cage.
Bedding also provides an absorbent surface for your creatures. This helps to keep their living environment dry, by soaking up urine and spilled water.
Finally, guinea pig bedding is the perfect material for your pigs to burrow and play in. They love to dig down into a thick surface, just as they would in the wild. You can make this even more enjoyable for them by hiding food and treats beneath the surface for them to find.
There are several types of bedding available for your guinea pigs - here are the main ones and their advantages and disadvantages.
Wood shavings are the most common type, and are what most people use. It is very cheap to buy, and is readily available in most pet shops. It can even be found in many supermarkets these days, making it a very convenient type of bedding to use.
However, the downside is that it contains a high dust content. This is released into the air as your animals run around, and can cause breathing difficulties, and even lead to long-term damage. This dust can also affect people with allergies.
If you do decide to use wood shavings for your guinea pig bedding, try to choose a product which has large shavings rather than small ones. These cause less irritation and create a deeper, softer cushion.
Cardboard bedding is a popular alternative to wood. It is very similar in principle, but contains much less dust, and therefore affects your animals' breathing much less. This type of bedding is much preferred over shavings, and is recommended by animal welfare organisations and leading guinea pig breeders and owners.
Finally there is flax straw bedding. This is considered the ultimate type of guinea pig bedding, but it is also considerably more expensive than the other two types. However, it makes up for this by being very soft and absorbent, with virtually no dust content.
Whichever type of guinea pig bedding you choose, you will find that it comes in a range of different-sized blocks. These are highly compacted, plastic wrapped packages which contain enough bedding to last for several weeks. Generally you will save money by buying a larger pack, but of course you should make sure you have somewhere to keep it first!