Finacard

[savvy]

I've been looking at moving from woodshavings to something else and have spotted Finacard on the ratrations website.

Has anyone used it, would they recommend it and exactly how big is a bale of it?

[ntg]

It's good for not falling out the cage like woodshavings do but I found that it got smelly quite quickly so I've moved onto a large flake woodshaving called bedmax which is working well for me so far. I also found I used more per cleanout which means it worked out to be a lot more expensive in the long run.

Delivery is fantastic and it's a more eco friendly option though!

Bale size is a typical horse bedding bale at about 70x30x40 cm.

[Deleted]

I didn’t like it.. when I had tiles and metal trays once weed on a few times it would stick like a b to the trays / tiles. It also stunk up pretty quick.


Hemp is always my favourite, the mats or the chips.. I use the loose chips now I have the vivs, it still makes a mess SOMEHOW lol but it smells so good and they dig like crazy! Finacard I felt like changing it every other day...

Hemp I change 2 carrier bags full every week per viv.. they have it very deep so that’s not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but I change the most pooey/wet areas and it’s good to go!

[savvy]

Its not the mess I have issues with, over the weekend I had another batch of contaminated woodshavings, and I had to run out to p@h for carefresh.

I remove all of the substrate on a weekly basis anyway, so cost has to be a factor here (£20 a week for carefresh is just not feasible.) How much would hemp chips work out at, I'm not a fan of hemp mats?

Also, would mixing carefresh with finacard work?

[ntg]

You could try fitch if you like carefresh? I keep hearing good things about it!

[Deleted]

Jun 11, 2018 18:01:18 GMT savvy said:

Its not the mess I have issues with, over the weekend I had another batch of contaminated woodshavings, and I had to run out to p@h for carefresh.

I remove all of the substrate on a weekly basis anyway, so cost has to be a factor here (£20 a week for carefresh is just not feasible.) How much would hemp chips work out at, I'm not a fan of hemp mats?

Also, would mixing carefresh with finacard work?

The chips is like £15 for absolutely loads, I can do all four vivs with like 6 inch deep of substrate with one pack! So it’d go pretty far x

[moletteuk]

Definitely try Fitch if Carefresh works for you, it comes in horse bail size, maybe a bit shorter and fatter. I use it mixed with hemp chips (aubiose).

[savvy]

OK, I'm going to go against the grain here. I ordered a bag of finacard (mainly because I could get it next day delivery without a premium delivery cost) and it was cheap mid month, and I tried it out.

It's been in there a week now, no smell, and the boys seem to love it. I did put a bit of carefresh in the loo corners as I had some left which may have helped. They have both spent the entire week dashing around with a mouthful of it, ripping it up, pushing it into piles around the cage and then getting in the middle of it for either a good dig or a kip. They've never done this with any substrate I've used before.

The previous week was carefresh week following a mad dash to p@h to find something when I found I had foul chemically smelling woodshavings again (I have taken that matter up with the pet shop.) I have to say, the boys weren't keen on the carefresh.

I think I may have to give the boys the casting vote here and stay with the finacard for a while. It's certainly increased their activity levels.

[deguconvert]

Love the report, Savvy!! Especially that your boys are so happy with it!

[moletteuk]

Sounds good! Card products used to be really popular on the forum maybe 5 to 7 yrs ago, so you aren't the only one to like it.

[morton235]

A substrate thread! Just what I needed!

I'm looking for a new substrate for the girls. Mr Goo is on finacard, which works really well for him, but the girls are insanely stinky! I think it's because they're big drinkers, so there must be more urine (in the time it takes Goo to go through one bottle, Riley and Bounce go through four!)

The girls are currently on Catolet, which is paper pellets, but even with that they barely get to day 5 before stinking the room out.

The hemp chips are interesting - are they quite large chips? I'm reluctant to try anything small and light cause I have a severe hatred for shavings, they just get everywhere and are so dusty!

There is a wood litter at work that my colleague uses for her rabbit, called 'Cats Best'. She raves about it but I don't know if it'd be suitable for goos and I can't seem to find an ingredients list for it. The one she uses is the cat litter one, but I noticed they also do a universal one. Has anyone used this before?

[deguconvert]

I've never heard of it! But . . . could be because I'm in Canada. I'm sure you've Googled it?

[morton235]

I've googled it and been on their website but can't find the actual wood listed, which is a pain.

[deguconvert]

No kidding!! Totally a pain. Is there a "contact us" thing that you can use to ask about it?

[bouncy]

The cat litter ones are usually pine-based - I used it in my house bunny's litter tray.

I dislike normal woodshavings too. I went from them to Carefresh (extortionate!), to hemp (messier than woodshavings), and am now back on woodshavings. They're not normal ones, though. I get the horse bales, which are 20-25kg and very firmly packed. Because they're for horses, the shavings are huge (average "shaving" size is over one square inch!") and they're also a few mm thick. Virtually no dust, likely because of the size of the pieces. Again, they're pine, and they've left in some bits of bark too. Spidey LOVES the stuff, and spends his time picking up the bigger bits, and chews them. I get them from the local tack shop for..........£7!

The first couple of batches, I used Pureflake, but some of the bits are close to normal woodshavings. I'm now using Bedmax, and it's great. I'm about to use the last of it, and that's what I'll be replacing it with, even though the tack shop has another couple of brands, as well as auboise (hemp) and a pellet brand.

[morton235]

Still haven't found out what the cat litter is made of, so I've done like DC suggested and sent them an email.

In the mean time, the horse woodshavings sound interesting. Do you find they control smell well, Bouncy? And how are they for being kicked out of the cage? When the girls first came to me they were on shavings and it was a nightmare, I lost my rag and changed them to finacard after two days, they got it everywhere! Bounce is a scratter so she likes to kick bedding around, does it stand up well to being flung about or does a gentle breath blow it out of the cage? They sound like they're a bit more weighty than the usual small animal shavings.

[ntg]

I use the bedmax as well, the majority of it just gets knocked out when the cage door is open. As for smell, if you leave it long enough then like anything it'll start to smell but I can go a week without smelling anything and even then it's just their litter tray that takes 2 seconds to clean. Rest of the cage smells like pine, even where they tend to pee outside the tray.

Same goes for the chins which produce a lot more urine (I try and clean their trays out at least twice a week). However, their cage tends to reek anyway because they pee on their hay, their food and anywhere else they feel like since they're dirty little b****rs!

[ntg]

Saying that, my sense of smell is next to useless, but my partner who is much more sensitive to smells agreed that its loads better than the finacard

Edit: also forgot to say the mess is similar to what I saw with finacard, so in summary, the bale of bedmax lasts longer, smells fresher for longer, creates as much mess but is cheaper than finacard. And if you love the smell of pine like I do then it has the added bonus of making your house smell like a saw mill

[morton235]

Well that's pretty much sold me then! It's worth a try, anyway. I might have to jiggle some things around since I still have a nearly full bale of finacard for Goo, and no current storage space, but I'm sure I'll think of something haha. Thanks for the info! I'll order some and report back

[morton235]

Something that caught my eye though - you said your goos have a litter tray. How did you make this happen? Tell me everything!

The girls are neater than goo and tend to go mostly in the same corner, but Bounce is adamant that no substrate must ever touch the poo/wee corner and she scratches it bare after every clean out.