Bedding/Litter/Fleece

[Kay O.]

Hi all! I have 5 female rats (8 months old) in a Prevue Ferret Nation cage (the bottom rack is removed and only the tray remains). I feel like I could really cut down on some cost and perhaps maintenance time? I have a mild OCD so please bare with me when I get into the details, lol. I'm going to write out my routine and if you have any suggestion on how I can cut down on some of the cost or if I could make things easier, please let me know!! I am open to all suggestions and so appreciative. =)

Daily:
Wipe down surfaces of cage, including wheel, toys, water, food bowl
Pick up soiled areas and poos, replenish bedding where it's needed (mostly corners, of course)
They have various hammocks that I attach a fleece blanket to so they can crawl under, I change the fleece daily

Every 4 days:
everything removed from cage and wiped down
dump all bedding and replace
I replace their hammock/fleece with a clean one

I am using VitaKraft Fresh World bedding right now, but at $20 per bag, the bag lasts me about a week and a half, and that's $60 per month in bedding alone! Is this normal? With prior rats I've used 1/2 Kaytee paper bedding and 1/2 Kaytee soft granules. I felt like this was super messy so I didn't want to go that route this time. I've also tried fleece but they chew it up and its totally saturated with pee. Since the fleece isn't absorbent, they just track it all over. =(

They are still peeing on the top level in their cage, I've considered buying a litter tray for that corner since they seem to enjoy crawling out of bed to go to the bathroom there. Is this a good idea or should I be encouraging them to go potty in the bottom where the bedding is?

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Rat_Girl09]

I think buying a litter tray would be great. You could only wipe every thing down once a week and change the fleece items every 2 or 3 days, and for a cheaper bedding you could you aspen or pelleted paper cat litter that is unscented. These are bolth cheap options you can buy big bags of aspen for like 10 bucks and paper cat litter for like $15-$20 per a 20 pound bag.

 

[Rat_Girl09]

If you are in the U.S. a good brand of paper cat litter is unscented Yesterday’s News. This would be great for the whole cage or just the litter pan if you get one you can also get different size bags of it.

 

[Kay O.]

thanks for your suggestion! I did get a litter tray for their most used corner and they have been using it...but they're still going a little in all corners, lol. My first few rats were so quick to potty train, so this is new territory! They're stubborn little weenies