I'm going to try out some more hardwood pellets again, hopefully anyone that uses some can share their experiences? I like the idea of stove pellets because they are still a couple of dollars cheaper than the Equine Fresh I buy, and there is less chance of irritants/phenols from the wood.

I know many of us here swear by the pellets for rat and mouse litter. Brands such as Equine Fresh, Eagle Valley, Woody Pet. These as far as I know are all made from pine.

While Pine is still debated as being harmful to rats in shavings and chips form... how have your animals done on the pellets?

Woody pet touts on it's website that the process by which they process the wood effectively removes all of the oils, acids, tars from the wood.

But how about you people that use the stove pellets?

The stove pellets are debated between hard wood and soft wood. I've been reading up on the differences between types, and I had tried a few different brands out back in the beginning of my searching.

The major thing I didn't like about the pellets I bought is that they never CLEARLY stated what type of wood was used, or whether or not it was 100% hardwood.

Apparently many hardwood pellet brands use additives, cardboard and paper, making the pellets smell weird.

http://www.pelletking.com/wood-pellet-information.aspx

I had bags of weird smelling pellets, but I didn't know that was from the additives.

A good hardwood pellets has no bark, paper, cardboard or "recycled products".

If you use hardwood pellets, they should smell like clean wood.

I stopped using them solely because they smelled worse than the rats pee and poop! Now I'm wondering if the brands I bought were just cheap.