Size of Fitch bales

[Minimum77]

Hi, I've ordered the Savic plaza and plan on moving Fungus into it next week once I have everything. I'm using carefresh at the moment and she is fine with it but I've read about Fitch on here and was thinking of buying it. I know it's good value buying the large bales but I don't have room for it. I'm trying to work out if the 4kg bag would save me much or just stick with carefresh. Also is the 4kg enough to fill the savic plaza as it has a deep base. The carefresh is measured in litres so it's confusing to compare. I don't need to change the substrate much with the cage she's in at the moment (iMac fantasy with extention) She uses a potty and poops on the top floor outside her bed so no mess on substrate so I only changed every 3 months, even then it didn't really need it. So basically I'm trying to figure out how much I will need lol. Thanks for any replies 😀

[cypher]

I would think you'd need a 10kg bag to fill the base of your Plaza, 4kg certainly wouldn't do it.
If you're going to be filling the base from scratch it would probably be worth getting a 20kg bag as it's so much cheaper & you wouldn't have a huge amount to store for future cleaning then maybe just get the 10kg bag when you eventually need more, I'm really short on space but don't fine 10kg a problem to store really.

[Minimum77]

Originally Posted by cypher

I would think you'd need a 10kg bag to fill the base of your Plaza, 4kg certainly wouldn't do it.
If you're going to be filling the base from scratch it would probably be worth getting a 20kg bag as it's so much cheaper & you wouldn't have a huge amount to store for future cleaning then maybe just get the 10kg bag when you eventually need more, I'm really short on space but don't fine 10kg a problem to store really.

Is the 20kg quite big. I only have a shelf of around 50cm wide and 40 high to keep all my hamstery things. My cage is arriving into pets at home today but won't be moving her into it until I have everything as I don't want to keep changing it as she will be stressed enough. We've only had her coming up for 1 month and last night she seemed a bit jumpy again after just starting to calm down and she nipped my daughter, not badly, we couldn't even see any marks on her finger. She had started to chew tiers on my daughters pj bottoms and when my daughter stopped her very gently she wasn't very happy and had a wee nip. My daughter is 14 so she's not too phased about it. I'm guessing after her cage move she might be a bit on edge for a few days.

[cypher]

The 20kg bag is big yes! If you don't think you would be using it to fill the cage straight away then you wouldn't be able to store it on a shelf, you'd probably be better off just getting 10kg in that case.
You're right to wait until you have everything so you don't need to mess with the cage once she moves over, it will probably take her a while to settle in the new cage, some are fine really quickly others may take up to a couple of weeks to really feel at home again.
Don't do anything other than spot cleaning pee now & for a few weeks at least after the mover, keep her old substrate to scatter over the new & if you can keep her old nest material too & she'll settle much quicker.

[Minimum77]

Originally Posted by cypher

The 20kg bag is big yes! If you don't think you would be using it to fill the cage straight away then you wouldn't be able to store it on a shelf, you'd probably be better off just getting 10kg in that case.
You're right to wait until you have everything so you don't need to mess with the cage once she moves over, it will probably take her a while to settle in the new cage, some are fine really quickly others may take up to a couple of weeks to really feel at home again.
Don't do anything other than spot cleaning pee now & for a few weeks at least after the mover, keep her old substrate to scatter over the new & if you can keep her old nest material too & she'll settle much quicker.

Thank you for the advice, She uses a potty just now so hopefully she will use it in her new cage then I shouldn't need to touch anything else, I'll use her old bedding too. looking for a nice wooden bed with no base and a flat roof so I can use it as a shelf too and I'll get a wooden bridge that reaches from top of bed onto the plastic shelf that comes with the cage, both on opposite ends. She has a big wheel too and some tubes to run through and I've ordered a hammock too which should be enough until she's settled.

[Pebbles82]

I get the 10kg bag It's not that massive and once you've filled the cage it would be easy to squish the bag under or behind something. I find that filling a 100cm cage from scratch takes up about a third of a 10kg bag of fitch. The small bags seem to do nothing really - doesn't seem equivalent at all somehow.

The 10kg bag is about the size of child's small beanbag chair - I used to just stick it in the corner of the room and put a throw over it (so it looked like a beanbag chair!). It comes in a large oversized plastic bag so there is room inside the bag to squish the contents into different shapes - I've had it stuffed under a chair or between a wardrboe and a wall before now!

It's definitely worth getting - saves a lot of money, is better than Carefresh in that there is no dust, and hamsters really like it. It's also hypoallergenic.

With a 100cm cage with 5" or so of Fitch in and a litter tray you could easily go 4 months or more without needing to change the substrate - just the odd bit of spot cleaning if absolutely necessary and emptying the litter tray. And even then because the cage is so large, most of it is clean and dry and you can re-use the dry half and mix it in with the new substrate.

[Minimum77]

Thanks everyone for your help. I've ordered a 10kg bag last night. I also received my hammock but they sent the wrong larger one ��

[Pebbles82]

What kind of hammock is it? You need to be a bit careful with fabric hammocks as they can be chewed. The Fuzzbutts ones are well made of fleece without loose bits of stitching etc but they can still be chewed. Some of it depends on the hamster. If you're worried about the height of the cage just put loads of Fitch in If you fill the base to within 1cm of the top it shouldn't fall out of the bars too much and will cushion any falls. Main thing is just make sure there is nothing hard or pointy/sharp to land on if they fall from the roof (so items like that can go under or on the shelf

[Minimum77]

It's a Trixie one, it is fleece on the inside. I tried to attach a pic but file is too large. I've to send it back for a refund anyway.