Fleece - preparing for first use...

[shades]

Hi,

I'm changing my gp's bedding to fleece for economic reasons. I've got the fleece and I'm trying to get the water barrier out .I've washed it four times at 60° but it's still watertight. I'm only washing in water. Should I add something to the water? How many washes should I need to make it gp ready?

Many thanks for your advice.

[3piggles]

Plain white vinegar. It cuts the sizing in the fabric, and it's the sizing that makes it water tight. You don't really need extremely hot water as much as you need the vinegar. If you have different lengths of washing cycles, try the longest one, which gives the fleece the most time with the vinegar. Good luck

[christine]

This is helpful! I had picked up some fleece blankets at Ikea on the weekend and was having the same trouble with them not being absorptive.

[3piggles]

The more you wash the fleece, the more absorbent it gets. Always use the plain vinegar as the fabric softener, and don't use any other fabric softener, washer or dryer. Try to use a detergent free of dyes and perfumes, as pigs live very close to their bedding.

[shades]

Thanks guys! Ready to go now!

[3piggles]

Excellent I have fleece pads, with a layer of absorbent material sewn to the underside of the fleece. It makes changing the fleece/cleaning the cage really quick and easy. Once you've been using fleece and toweling for a while, you sort out how much you need in the cage at one time, and may find you want to attach the two into one pad.

[shades]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Actually our pets are quite lucky because it's near impossible to get the materials for a C&C cage in my area, so I've made a cage from wood and chicken wire. They're running around in a 1.4*1m cage. Only my wife says it's too big for the living room

I've used wood chip before but economically it doesn't make sense. Fot the price of two 1kg bags of wood chips, I can buy a large fleece. I'm not sure I can easily find special animal-friendly absorbent material around here, but cheap towels are abundant in the market. Even taking into account the extra effort and the cost of washing, it's a no-brainer for me.

[3piggles]

I used wood pellet horse bedding covered with a layer of fiberglass window screen(there is some that feels like fabric), then the fleece pads. Since you don't have fleece pads, you can try just the layer of fleece. If you run your hand over the pellets and feel a lot of sharp edges, use a couple of layers of 100% cotton towels to pad the edges. When the wood pellets get wet, they turn to granules you just mix back into the pellets. After a while, most of the pellets have become granules, and you don't need the towels. The granules absorb as well or better than the pellets. I don't change my pellets, but I do scoop out saturated areas of granules, and replace them with fresh pellets. If a lot of hay gets into the granules, I scoop out those granules as well, and replace them with fresh pellets. Weekly, I stir all the pellets/granules together, move everything around, then spread and smooth it all over the cage floor again, reuse the screen which I've wiped or washed, put in clean fleece, and it's done.

Using the screen also allows you to put that over kitty litter or Carefresh bedding. I found the Carefresh needed to be replaced weekly. The kitty litter needed to have all the clumps removed, and sometimes to be sifted for poos that worked their way under the fleece, so that was less costly than Carefresh. I was using an almost totally dust free kitty litter from Walmart, and Walmart discontinued it. Now the only ones I can find have odor fighting crystals in them, and those are terrible for piggy respiratory systems. You may have access to better clumping/odor crystal-free kitty litter options.