How to Clean Out Your Guinea Pig’s Hutch
A step by step guide to cleaning out your guinea pig’s hutch
Your guinea pig’s hutch or cage should be cleaned out at least once a week.
It is important that the hutch is cleaned out thoroughly, in order to prevent your guinea pig getting dirty, and possibly catching diseases. It is also important that your guinea pig has access to a clean hutch, for the sake of the animal’s welfare.
When cleaning out the hutch you will need to have a safe place for your guinea pigs to go; this could be an enclosure, that you can still see them in or a cat basket or even an cardboard box lined with newspaper and hay.
Here’s a step by step guide on how to clean out your guinea pig’s hutch.
Step 1: Removing soiled bedding
When cleaning out your piggie’s hutch start with removing the soiled bedding. The easiest way to do this (If the bedding is on newspaper) is to lift the corners up and fold the paper inwards, therefore trapping the soiled bedding inside the newspapers. Lift this out and put into a carrier bag.
Remember to take out the food bowls, and any toys ( and the guinea pigs!) first.
Step 2: Cleaning out the inside thoroughly
Next, using a brush specifically for this purpose, sweep out any remaining debris and dispose of.
After this you can use a pet friendly disinfectant. This will thoroughly clean the hutch, and reduce odour, as well as possibly killing any harmful bacteria in the hutch.
Remember to make sure the disinfectant you use is pet friendly. These such pet-friendly disinfectants can be bought from most pet shops.
You will need to leave the hutch floor and walls to dry after spraying the disinfectant.
Step 3: Spreading new newspapers
Now, once the floor of the hutch is dry, you will need to spread the the floor with newspapers, or magazines. Make sure that whatever you use has no staples, as these could injure your guinea pigs.
It will be a lot easier to clean out the hutch the next time if you put newspaper down this time.
Step 4: Replacing the bedding
Now that the hutch has newspaper in you need to put some clean bedding in.
Most guinea pig owners will spread about an inch or so of sawdust first. If your guinea pig is allergic to saw dust you could use shredded paper. In this case try to avoid coloured paper, as the ink may be harmfulto the guinea pig if they eat it. Of course you can always buy special shredded bedding for your cavies from your local pet shop.
If wished you can miss out the sawdust/shredded paper process all together, provided you put a little more hay in.
Next put a couple of handfuls of hay in and fluff it up, so the guinea pigs can go underneath it if they want to. Timothy hay is good for this purpose.
Never use straw for guinea pigs as they have relatively sensitive skin compared to other animals, and straw can sometimes have sharp ends. Also baby guinea pigs especially, tend to burrow in more, and could get sharp straw ends in their eyes, which would be painful.
Step 5: Putting back the bowls, toys and Guinea pigs
Now you have replaced the bedding, you are ready to put back any food bowls, water bowls and toys.
Once everything is ready for your guinea pigs, you can put back your pets.
The last thing to do is to replace any food that may have been tipped out, as your guinea pigs will probably be hungry.
Below is a video detailing how to clean out your guinea pig’s hutch.
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