# What kind of cage setup do you think stays clean the longest?



## HeatherElle (Aug 16, 2012)

I can't decide with my boys. We used fleece liners with litter pans for a while but they got lazy and started pooping everywhere, so we switched to a deep base full of aspen and have been using that for months but they still poop all over the place, so I'm not sure it's any more sanitary. Maybe easier to clean up though... I'm just curious what seems to stay clean the longest with everyone else's critters.


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## Kinsey (Jun 14, 2009)

I would prefer to use fleece but it is hard to manage with mine. I currently use carefresh bedding. I clean it weekly, it's the best I have managed to figure out in my years of having rats.


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## Simons mum (Dec 19, 2013)

I'm shocked that there's no odor with using fleece for my girls. Every day I take the bottome fleece liner out and put a fresh one, but I leave the hammocks and hanging beds for the weekends to clean. I also have a litter pan that I fill with carefresh, but it has a plastic grate you put on top so the girls don't touch the carefresh. Luckily it's the only place they use the bathroom.


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## LeStan82 (Dec 31, 2013)

I like fleece also. You can spot clean stray poos daily. And change the fleece few times a week. Comfy , cheap and also easy to wash.


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## Lare (Jan 18, 2014)

My boys have a mix between fleece and carefresh. The large top level is fleece and the three shelves are fleece, and the bottom has carefresh. Their litterbox is on one of the shelves and is filled with carefresh and they will still go in their rather than the bottom level (it's probably more too lazy to walk all the way down rather than trained). They love laying on the fleece but they also love to dig and burrow in carefresh, so this way they have the "best of both worlds". Even my very sensitive-nosed mother has said she doesn't really notice a smell, I spot-clean daily and after a week the fleece just began to develop a very faint smell to it, which was when I threw it in the wash.

I might have lucked out with very well-behaved boys, their scent marking is really rare and I've never seen them try to tear anything in their cage up.


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## courtney+ella (Jan 7, 2014)

I have fake grass on there levels which I am in the process of changing to fleece and the base is all organic chemical free kitty litter, they do not have a litter tray but they always go in one corner so I clean out the spot and replace it every 1-2 days and give there cage a proper clean every week and they have never smelt or anything


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## Nikadi (Jan 11, 2014)

We have newspaper at the moment! We have been using fleece until earlier this week but due to the cage design on both cages, the boys just end up underneath it when on the bottom floor, and the girls pull it up and use it as impromptu bedding (despite the t-shirts and fleece scraps that get pulled into the cage!) We need to fit trays to put fleece on onto the bottom of their cages to hold down the fleece but haven't had the chance over the past couple of days! :/

We've changed between substrate and fleece often but the only substrate our boys aren't allergic too is carefresh, which is bloody expensive in the UK. We've had to line the base of our girls cage with wire mesh so can't use substrate for them any more.

Carefresh was definitely better for soaking up wee, but fleece we found much better in general, easier to clean, spot cleaning could be done as and when needed (our boys were litter trained until they decided not to be any more like yours!) and the flat levels are easier to change.

The girls are much less smelly than the boys too.


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## artgecko (Nov 26, 2013)

I used fleece, but my rats loved to destroy it... Even when clipped down, it was their favorite pastime to pull it and chew holes, etc. and, oddly enough, my boys were perfect at using the litter box while the girls went everywhere. 

I switched to aspen with a handful of kiln-dried pine pellets below the aspen for moisture absorption. I don't think it's cleaner per say, but it is definitely easier to clean out and I hated having to wash all of the extra fleece. I still use fleece hammocks and line my smaller shelves with old rags or small fleece pieces. But I can store those up and do a wash every two weeks. Now that I've found a cheap source for aspen, I don't mind using it so much.


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## LittleSparrow (Apr 14, 2014)

I use a mixture of fleece and shredded paper. I don't like using fleece liners for the entire cage, because I find it really starts to stink with the girls. Now, I line the shelves with fleece and shred up old bills and sometimes newspaper for the bottom. They love to toss it around and tunnel in it, though I find it starts to stink around the 2nd day so I find myself cleaning their cage pretty much every other day!


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

I expect i win for the longest between clean outs without smell. My guys live in a room of the sitting room and i have a very smell sensitive hubby and its been over 3 weeks now. Im going to clean them out tomorrow but more because i'm feeling bad than the cage is smelling. I find the following make the biggest difference to cage clean out frequency needed;

* Occupancy of the cage vs its size - my cage is an SRS, its big enough for 12, i have 4 lads, whilst they use it all they do have a lot of space per rat
* Deep layer of well absorbant substrate, i have a layer of chopped card about 2-3 inches deep (with a tray 5" deep to stop it going everywhere)
* Carefully positioned litter trays - boys are lazy but if you set up the cage right they will use litter trays. I hang mine next to there fave sleeping places and they have litter trained themselves.
* No shelves - these are smell traps, rats love to urinate on them, urine smells quickly. Instead i hang a couple cat litter trays with a layer of litter in them. This absorbs the urine and helps with the idea above too
* Very absorbant litter - i use paper cat litter, its pricey (well it should be but back to nature sponser our shows so if i do well i get a free bag lol) but because i only use it in small areas in the litter tray it works well. Again using a decent deep layer means it lasts longer than 2 thinner layers. I use about 1" in the tray. This allows the poos to shuffle to the bottom whilst the top stays dry, letting the cat litter do its job. 
*Spot clean old veg and messy poos but no more - one of the worst thing you can do for keeping a well set up cage low smell is to clean too much, rats mark newly cleaned surfaces and are more likley to mark more if they feel that their scent keeps getting wiped off. It helps settled them having the place smell familier.
*Active cage layou - i dont use loads of hammocks, maybe 3 plus a plant pot and basket in the whole cage, instead theres lots of ropes, branches and such to keep them moving around. This discourages laziness and keeps them moving, making popping to that litter tray much more logical.


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

just a couple of photos to show what I mean. I just took them now. The first is a full cage shot the second one of there litter trays.


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