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Post by lilcritterfever on Jul 13, 2011 11:35:40 GMT
I'm starting to plan for my second degu cage, and I want to do things a little different than I did for my first. The one I have now has particle board floors and ledges (lined with kiln-dried pine for safe chewing) I'm having lots of trouble with urine soaking into the wood and it's starting to smell. (I always line the floors with newspaper under the bedding, but they love tearing it up so they can pee on bare wood.) What kind of cleaning solution will take the smell away? Next question- For the new cage, I want to have tile or something similar on the floors so I can just wipe them clean. What kind of material should I be looking for? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!  |
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Post by Kins on Jul 13, 2011 12:33:53 GMT
We used MDF covered, very tightly, with self adhesive vinyl floor tiles. Works a treat. If you also make sure the edging is quite 'high' so that you can put a good layer of substrate on it that helps. When it comes to cleaning time, you just scoop up the substrate and then scrub the tiles clean. Peasy! These are the exact tiles we used www.wickes.co.uk/invt/620050 Hope that helps. |
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Post by lilcritterfever on Jul 13, 2011 12:44:16 GMT
Yes, that helps thank you! I wonder, is it necessary to use the substrate when the tiles are so easy to clean? I was thinking I'd use substrate on the "ground floor" only, leaving the ledges bare tile.
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Post by Kins on Jul 13, 2011 12:58:59 GMT
Yes, that helps thank you! I wonder, is it necessary to use the substrate when the tiles are so easy to clean? I was thinking I'd use substrate on the "ground floor" only, leaving the ledges bare tile. You're welcome! Umm, I think that is down to personal preference and how often you want/like to clean the cage out. My 2 'little' goos are dirty little devils and are smellier than my 'big' goos. So I changed the edging on their shelves so that they hold more substrate and so far it seems to be helping with the smell and keep them cleaner for longer as it is the wee that smells. If it is soaked up by substrate then it tends not to smell... |
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Post by woodchip on Jul 13, 2011 12:59:51 GMT
I've got 4 full size layers covered with some VERY trendy vinyl floor tiles (acquired from a friend at work). In the shop I think I was gonna spend £4 for 6sq ft of floor tile (£16 for my cage) but got these for free. It's only been used since Saturday, so not had to clean it out yet.
Be careful with the tiles though. That glue gets everywhere!
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Post by lilcritterfever on Jul 13, 2011 13:59:44 GMT
Gotcha  |
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Post by woodchip on Jul 13, 2011 14:28:12 GMT
One thing I forgot to mention is I sealed the shelves with a 50/50 mix of PVA glue and water, let that dry then put down the tiles. Anything that gets past the tiles (hopefully) won't sullk into the wood.
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Post by lilcritterfever on Jul 13, 2011 18:33:59 GMT
Thanks woodchip |
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Post by moletteuk on Jul 13, 2011 19:36:55 GMT
I'm still struggling with stinky shelves. I recently put some vinyl tiles on the top shelf as an experiment, but they've started chewing them up already after only a couple of weeks. I think it didn't help that the goos were around when I was sticking them down, and they chewed a couple of edges of the tiles as I put them in (!), leaving slightly chewed bits in the middle after the whole row was down.
Has anyone got any ideas what else I could do? I was wondering about using a sheet of lino and overlapping it up the sides a couple of inches to avoid wee going down the slight gap and then putting some wood or metal trim right round the edge.
I can only recommend putting tiles of some sort in before you let the goos move in, so they don't then know there is something underneath and make it a mission to uncover the original floor.
PS putting extra substrate doesn't always help because my goos like to scrape all of it away from certain places, including one of their favourite weeing places.
I'm losing about 10 - nil in the clean shelves battle!
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Post by woodchip on Jul 13, 2011 19:45:27 GMT
The lino covered shelves would probably work, then screw some pine edging down (like skirting boards) so that can chew that instead of the lino.
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