Cleaning deep substrate

[kiania]

After reading a thread in which someone mentioned their hamster pooing in their nest, I am now a little worried. Nimh (hybrid) has fairly deep substrate (about 3 inches deep at the shallow end, four or perhaps five at the deeper end), and digs out elaborate batcaves inside it. I've sifted through her megazorb once looking for her food stash (and found nothing), so I'm wondering how best to deal with spot-cleaning her.

Ideally, I don't want to be trashing her tunnels every other day - do people with deeper substrate just clean up the surface regularly, and mix it up less frequently? Or do they dig out every few days?

She gave me looks of dismay the one time I put her back after hunting for her food cache, she had a "Omg, my home! My beautiful beautiful home! ...what did you do!" look going, I felt so guilty!

Hence the query - suggestions for what to do would be gratefully received

[SnickersTheFirst]

Is she toilet trained? I've noticed hamsters smell a fair bit more than my gerbils did but for my gerbil I didn't clean out his deep bedding for 11 months...now that sounds horrible but it didn't smell at all and his brother passed away so I wanted him to be able to keep the scent. So the point being ...the bedding can last ages without being cleaned! Just do it when you think it's starting to smell.

[kiania]

No, she isn't toilet trained - or at least, her litter tray she uses for bathing, and is completely clean I can't smell anything in there but megazorb though. She's due a new cage this coming weekend, which should be less of an issue to poo-pick, but will still have the deep substrate/tunnels issue. I wouldn't take away her ability to make batcaves, she obviously adores them!

I was going for the German concept of lots of substrate, and less complete cleans - but I worry about the tunnels

[SnickersTheFirst]

I used to feel terrible destrying the gerbil tunnels for cleanouts! But luckily they didn't get too annoyed and with the pair of them working on it, it didn't take them long to fix so don't worry too much.

Maybe try taking just the top layer off when cleaning? so as not to go too deep and ruin tunnels.

[vanilla-yazoo]

ild just spot clean regularly, this is what i do, i have 8 cages in my room so if they start smelling i jump on them, but i havent cleaned them fully for a few weeks, they dont have deep bedding but use shelves for toileting so life is easy.

as long as it isnt smelling, and you take out the bad bits, thats fine and one happy hamster!!

[kiania]

Taking the top off isn't too hard - I've yet to work out where she is peeing though. Poo, I can see. But pee seems to vanish into the megazorb. I'm extremely tempted to feed her beetroot, just so I can find out where she's going (except on me - I'm apparently a 'favourite' place to pee on )

[SnickersTheFirst]

A lot of hamsters take to peeing on their wheel, have you checked there? You often can't see it but you can't half smell it!

[Lougarry]

Originally Posted by kiania

I was going for the German concept of lots of substrate, and less complete cleans

This is what I do. I kept my horse on deep litter and it works fine for my hams. I've only done a total clean for Dinah 2 or 3 times in 5 1/2 months, and Magic and Bear have each been totally cleaned once since I got them. There were no pee stains or anything, so I think if the litter's deep enough it is absolutely fine. Dinah tends to poo in one place so it's easy enough to scoop out.

[kiania]

Originally Posted by SnickersTheFirst

A lot of hamsters take to peeing on their wheel, have you checked there? You often can't see it but you can't half smell it!

I'm used to hog wheels, but Nimh's could do with a clean (I'm just heading to bed now - job for tomorrow, that). It is a bit icky in the middle (she's on a flying saucer for the moment), could be pee-sticky (I'm going with the "I'd rather not touch it to find out" plea there ).

[Lougarry]

I think the pee just gets absorbed in the Megazorb.