A few months ago, we decided to take the plunge and invest in fleece liners. We’ve used fleece atop towels for around 15 years, with a brief dalliance with liners maybe 10 years ago before resuming the “deconstructed” technique. We’ve always paired our fleece with a section of loose hay by the way, so I guess we’ve been “hybrid” forever. And for the part of the hybrid involving fleece, well the old tried and trusted deconstructed technique just worked for us.
Until it didn’t.
Until my husband and friend had to clean cages out for me when I was stuck with a broken ankle.
Until my husband got involved long-term with the laundry.
It became quiiiite clear it was going to be far easier to switch to a single piece of bedding which we could literally roll up, drop the paper and hay into the compost bin, and then shake and brush off any debris before bagging up to launder. With my deconstructed method, the towels were too heavy and looked unprofessional, not to mention taking an age to dry; the fleeces were a pain to lay flat in the far corners of the cages, and the pigs kept digging half of the fleece up anyway!
With some generous donations from friends who had used liners for their piggies but no longer needed them, we tried some of the waterproof-backed ones, we tried some different brands, and we tried these guys.
CandE Cosies won our vote because they dry faster than any of the other styles we tested, and they were stitched in a style we knew worked well and lasted well. They use Zorb, a fancy absorbant material, sewn and layered in between two sides of fleece. Having that inner Zorb stitched into place is *so* important because there’s nothing worse than a fleece liner that won’t flatten. Think cushions squashed out of shape, the innards mashed up irreversibly. Eventually you just accept that you have a dodecahedron cushion, which for a decorative cushion in your house might be quite fashionable… but that’s not an option for a bedding for piggies. It’s got to stay flat.
The double-sided fleece + Zorb combination seems to work well, at least for us, especially with the current economic climate meaning number one, tumble drying is too costly at the rate we need to cycle through these; number two, they dry evenly in our drying room which is set up with a fan and dehumidifier; and number 3, not tumbling them means they will last longer as the material is not being exposed to heat or buffeted about twice as much! I honestly can’t wait until the weather is warm enough to get them hung up on the line outside, where they’ll be dry inside an hour 😍
They were the most expensive liners of all the viable options I looked into, but it was also important I supported a fellow micro business (I think we both might even qualify as nano businesses – we do well enough but fundamentally it’s run by one person with maybe a couple of occasional employees or volunteers!).
I reached out to CandE Cosies to talk about ordering in bulk and they helped get us started with our intial requirement of 2 complete full sets (6 boarding cages, 3 resident cages). As a thank you for all their hard work and their kindness, we agreed to advertise them to our clients, and on our socials and website. We’re a few months late getting started on that (sorry! Story of my life!), but expect to see the CandE Cosies flyer floating about in pictures and videos, along with Gorgeous Guineas ads too.
We were so excited when the liners arrived we even did a very poorly filmed unboxing vid!
I do have plenty of photos of the cages all laid out with the liners, but wouldn’t you know it, I can’t find any right now, so I’ll have to come back to that next time. This is all I have for the moment, but I know I’ve got better images, so I’ll source them ASAP.
