How to Clean your C&C Guinea Pig Cage!
Daily Cleaning/Refreshing
Spot clean daily as needed. Remove any excess food and waste.
Pick up any stray poos from fleece with a stiff brush and mini dust pan.
Refill hayrack – make sure there’s always unlimited hay. Change water bottles with fresh water daily.
Weekly Full Cleaning
Full cage cleaning at least weekly or as needed. C&C cages are meant to be cleaned in place. There's no need to lift the base out of the grid perimeter to dump it out, or take it outside to hose it down. No need for that. Ideally, you should be using a kitchen with disposable bedding. You can just lift that out, dispose of that, wipe clean with ½ water and half vinegar, and replace with fresh disposable bedding. If the kitchen isn’t too full, scoop out and remove any wet, soiled sections in the Kitchen area -- stir it up or add more fresh, dry bedding as appropriate.
After removing the bedding in the rest of the cage, spray the inside of the coroplast base with a mixture same mixture and wipe clean with a rag, paper towels, or a soft brush. Rinse with a clean, damp rag and replace the bedding.
Best solution?
Vinegar is a great cleaning solution. Repurpose a spray bottle and fill with half water, half white vinegar. It works GREAT for cleaning the Coroplast floors and walls of the cage.
Not only is vinegar anti-microbial, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and super cheap by the gallon, it is an acid. Urine is a base. Acids neutralize bases. Vinegar does a great job of cutting through and cleaning up urine. And of course, it is food and guinea pig safe. No need to spend money on other cleaners in more plastic bottles, polluting the environment.
If there’s stubborn stains on the Coroplast, soak a washcloth with vinegar and let it soak.
Scrub. Rinse, repeat as necessary. It WILL come up from Coroplast. Keep in mind, bad stains are usually a sign that you may need to clean the cage more often.
Cleaning the Canvas of a Midwest Cage?
Very difficult. The more you scrub and clean the canvas, the more you scrub off its 'water-resistant' coating, leaving it all the more susceptible to retaining stains, odors and debris. This is why we recommend replacing the canvas bottom of the Midwest cage with our fitted Coroplast insert
Use a “Kitchen”
Yes, guinea pigs poop and eat in the same place. That’s just their nature. Our Cavy Cafe can be lifted out of the cage, and the used bedding can be dumped into a wide-mouth garbage bag/bin or outdoors. Just be careful if it's really messy. However, most people clean the kitchens in place. It's pretty easy.
