Substrate Alternatives: Straw/Hay?

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Originally Posted by QueenOfKing

Yesterday's News. We use that for our pet chinchilla. It's made of recycled newspaper. In bulk it might be expensive but its pretty cheap and if not, shredded paper. You can buy it cheap or make your own.

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I've used this stuff before on small scale. The largest bag I can get is around 30lbs and is $20 per bag. We go through around 100lbs of pine a month, and spend less than $20 per month, and the fluffy pine goes a lot further than the dense pellets. Yesterday's news is great stuff, but when using it as substrate for 28 kitty-litter pan sized tubs, and 6 2'x3' cement mixing tubs, it adds up very quickly :)

Been trying out a mixture of the remainder of our pine and straw - the straw seems to aerate the pine and create structure for nest building, without compacting, or allowing babies to get buried and lost.

Will probably just suck it up and buy aspen once the pine runs out. It's a race of whether we run out of zyrtec or pine first. Hah.