[ineptmountebank]

I am a new rat owner that is using paper bedding. That is going to get a bit costly and a little impractical, so I was trying to come up with more cost effective ideas. Fleece sounds good because its soft on the rats feet and its washable but my rats like to dig and play which the paper bedding is good for. so if I were to get a large fleece blanket or jackets and cut them into paper bedding size pieces would that work? There are a few issues that I can think of like washing not getting the fleece all the way clean or it could be a choking hazard if cut too small but on the surface this sounds like the best of both worlds. Can anyone tell me why this would be a good or bad idea? I'm going to stick with the paper bedding for now because I don't want to potentially harm them.

 

[511958]

I wouldn't- fleece is not absorbent at all and soon your cage would turn into a smelly, wet mess

Instead of paper bedding you could get aspen or hemp- both pretty inexpensive and excellent at odor control and absorbency I am currently using the hemp I linked, (here it is again) and although I got it several months ago I still have a bit more than half of the bag left!

 

[ratsbian]

Fleece does not absorb the ammonia very well and it gets very gross, very fast. I would definitely do with a different bedding if possible, I use aspen and I love it.

 

[ineptmountebank]

I think that I will try both in small quantities to see which my rats prefer. I hope that they do better with the hemp because you can buy that in bulk at low cost. I am sorta afraid aspen because some people say that its the greatest others think that its the devil, so I'm kind of on the fence on that one.

 

[Enne]

You can buy a huge bale of kiln-dried pine or aspen shavings at Tractor Supply for a few dollars. No one says aspen is the devil lol, that's probably pine you're thinking of. And when it's kiln-dried it's completely safe to use as bedding.