litter question…

[Alicia Conklin]

I bought enough litter at the store this weekend to last me the two weeks til next pay day.  Well…I THOUGHT I did.  My husband decided to change the cat box and used the rabbit litter.  I was going to go buy regular cat litter to try to save a few bucks this week for their box but Mike went ahead and changed it before I did that.  So now I have just a small bag of the feline pine type litter.  I don’t think this is going to get us through..it almost will but not quite.  My plan is to put newspaper underneath and then a very slight layer of the feline pine and then some hay.  Do you guys think this will work out ok?  I just changed her litter yesterday so she should be good til our trip.  I’m going to fill her box the regular way for while she’s at my nephew’s …I don’t want him to have to change it so I am going to fill it before we leave Friday and she should be good til Tuesday.  So this will only be from Tuesday-Friday am.   Is there anything that I could add to the newspaper to make it stay fresher?  I thought I had read on here somewhere that people use baking powder with it? Is that safe for the buns? 

You know thinking about it this might not even be an issue..I might be thinking that we’ll need more litter then we do because I just thought about something..I just recently (today) changed Tucker’s litter box back to her HUGE one.  She just needs a big bathroom..what can I say..I’d like a bigger one too..what girl wouldn’t??  So then I took out her old one and put it in Drue’s cage.  She only has a few stray poops in there..no pees..so I could probably use that litter to fill her pan when she goes to my mom’s house.  That would mean that when I got back I’d have the whole bag of feline pine litter left.  That SHOULD get me through from Tuesday-Friday. 

But let’s say it doesn’t..I’m a preparer.  If I don’t have a back up plan I stress.  Let’s say I have to use newspaper for those few days.  What can I do to make it fresher. 

I just really don’t want to make another trip to the petstore lol.  I’ve spent way too much of my paycheck there this past week and on Friday oh boy..they’re going to love me next Friday. 

[Alicia Conklin]

Ok, well I MIGHT have found a solution.  I was looking online and from what I have read kiln dried pine is safe for rabbits.  It says regular pine shavings should not be used but that kiln dried pine is safe to use.  Is this true?  Is there any other worry with shavings other then the safety factor?  I wouldn’t use this all the time since I’d think it’d end up being messier then the pellets but I was just wondering if there were any concerns of using this in a pinch?  I have almost a whole big bag of the kiln dried pine shavings because of the hamsters.  It’s so condensed that filling up the hamster cages barely makes a dent in it so I could definitely borrow some of that for the rabbit pans.

[jerseygirl]

I only put litter in the back 1/3 of the box. Maybe 2 small cups. Jersey seems to only go in back spot of the box. I take out the wet stuff and put a bit more in as needed. That helps conserve litter. You could always use some shredded newspaper if you run out of litter. Maybe with some hay on top.

[Tami]

I’ve run into a problem I didn’t think would happen !

In my rinky dink town, seems everyone has bought up ALL the wood pellets !  There isn’t any ANYWHERE !!!  We were buying Yesterdays News @ Walmart but they discontinued it, so we switched to wood pellets.  Seems everyone is in a panic around here about having to buy fuel oil this winter and have switched to wood pellet stoves !  Our Tractor Supply store sold out of all their stoves AND wood pellets within a week of arrival !!!

Our True Value store sold out of wood pellets also, our Farm Bureau doesn’t sell them & neither does Walmart (now why doesn’t that surprise me?).  If we can’t find a suitable alternative we will have to drive about 45 mins. to Petco for Yesterdays News, which we cannot afford !

So while we were in Tractor Supply grumbling about litter & cursing the world, we stumbled into the Equine section and saw something called “Swheat Stall” & was wondering what you experts had to say about this as an alternative litter source ? 

Here is a FAQ page about it that I found doing a Google search:

http://swheatstall.com/facts.htm

Thank you very much for the feedback

[TARM]

I get Equine Fresh at Tractor Supply. It costs $6.79 a bag for 40 lbs. It’s safe and does a marvelous job. I don’t know about the wheat litter, I’ve never seen or used it.

[Tami]

Oh GREAT !!  I saw the Equine Fresh right beside the Swheat Stall and was wondering about that !  Does the kind you use have pine in it because the one I saw at TSC said it had pine and usually when pine is used, there’s a “pine smell” which I didn’t think was good for buns ?

[TARM]

There is not pine smell. The phenols are removed when the pellets are manufactured. I don’t know how they do it but otheres here say it’s safe…and I trust their judgement. I just bought a month’s worth of litter today for $21. I love it!

[Tami]

I just remembered……..it wasn’t called “Equine Fresh” it was ”Equine Pine”………..but it looked exactly like wood pellets, only a light beige color instead of brown   Does the Equine Fresh look anything like that ?

 

 

[TARM]

Yup. That’s the stuff.

[Beka27]

the Equine Pine is fine. i want to start using it but my hubby doesn’t want me driving that far for it… so i’m stuck paying astronomical litter prices. boo.

[Tami]

Oh my gosh, I’m so glad to hear that !  I was really starting to panic over this whole thing !!

Hubby will definitely be elated when I tell him   He has been driving me NUTS since we found out that everyone around here is sold out of the wood pellets !

Did anyone check out the FAQ’s on the Swheat Stall ? 

Thanks so very much for helping me out with this !  I really appreciate it

[Beka27]

swheatstall.com/index.htm   here’s the link for the site.  it looks like it’s fine.  it’s made from aspen which is safe and wheat.  it says no chemicals.  i wonder if anyone else has used this or heard of it?

[osprey]

I have never used the wheat/aspen product, but the ingredients list looked OK. I hope they mean that they use the wheat stalks and not the seeds, because the bunnies will try to eat it if it smells like a cereal grain. I do sometimes use a pine based horse litter call Barn Dry, which is similar to the wood stove pellets, but smaller, more crumbly pellets. In general, shavings are bad for two reasons: 1 – they don’t do very much to cut down on ammonia smell because they are not very absorbent, and 2 – the phenols from the pine wood (what makes it smell like pine) can damage a bunny’s liver. Processed, pelleted pine or aspen is totally fine, the extruding process heats the wood and drives off the phenols.

[Author]

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