I'm getting my first ever rats (three girls) in about a week and I'm currently thinking about cheap bedding solutions. I can get shredded paper fairly easily but we always have newspapers around the house that I could shred up and use. I'm just worried about the ink - will that be bad for them?
We’ll get right into the pros for these bedding types and go over their cons as well, so pet parents get the full picture about these alternatives. Do keep in mind that some rabbits might be prone to eating their bedding. That is just fine if you use hemp, pelleted straw or aspen bedding, but ingesting paper bedding might be an issue. I've used newspaper to line the cage for years, and none of the rats has had a problem with it yet. (I mostly use fleece bedding, but the rats do occasionally rip up the newspaper lining). Newspaper is usually safe, although the inks can rub off and make your rat look a little bit grungy.
I've also got some fleece, hammocks, the usual sort of thing that I will be using so they can nap in different areas of their cage, and they will be litter trained... Thoughts?
So I've recently found out that Yesterdays News is no longer suitable bedding for rats as they changed to start using 50% wood pulp from hard and soft wood sources. Thankfully I haven't been using Yesterday's news but it's UK equivalent (originally I was told made by the same parent company) Bio-Catolet. My concern is that this may have had it's composition altered too, to now include wood pulp. As their website is currently down (and has been for a couple of days now), does anyone know if this is the case or if Bio-Catolet is safe to continue buying and using?
The bag I have currently is far too old to have been affected by the changes, however in future it would be useful to know rather than wasting money on something I can't (and wouldn't) use in my rats cages.