Well now the piggies have moved off of carpet in my bedroom to having wood floors in their new room. I have been trying to think of what would be the best method to try and keep the hay from getting everywhere. The good thing about carpet, is at least it kept the hay from moving across the floor anytime someone walked. The wood floor just allows the hay to go everywhere, even out of the room.
The pigs have been moved for about a week now and I have been experimenting with what is going to be the best method to keep the room looking clean, and be easy to still have access to the hay. I think I have come up with a pretty good solution and I just wanted to share in case any of you with several piggies would be interested as well.
Ok, I use hayracks built from the old style grids with coroplast in the back for my KM hay. They look like this for the smaller cages, and than are double length grids for the larger cages.
To store my KM hay, I bought a laundry bin sorter on wheels. It had three different sections in it to sort the laundry by loads, but I cut the sections open to just have it one larger sized bin. I left about 2 inches of fabric on each of the seams in case it frays a little it won't rip or come apart. This is it...
The large opening on the top makes it easy to put the haybins right into the hamper to fill without the hay getting everywhere. Even my larger haybins fit real easy. The wheels on the hamper makes it easy to move the hamper to and from each cage so I am not having to carry the haybins and strands of hay fall everywhere as I am walking. The hamper easily holds 25lbs of hay and still moves across the floor without bending and stretching out of it's orginal shape. The nylon material allows the hay to get good air circulation. It even has a flip cover that stays connected to the hamper that just folds to the back when you open it up.
This has made my life sooooo much easier, and the pigs' area much cleaner.
For my kitchen areas, I use barn bermuda grass on the floor area. For that hay I am using a wicker laundry hamper with a cotton lining. The hamper is light weight so I am just able to lift the hamper up and tip some of the hay out and into the kitchen area. Again, the hay stays hidden out of sight, and is so easy to lift and dump.
This is the bermuda hay hamper.
Top just comes right off and the lining can come out if it needs to be washed.
The larger hamper on wheels was less than $20.00 and the other hamper was $18.00 (or maybe $16.00?). I bought them both at Walmart.
So there you have it :) I am loving this setup and hope that it helps some of you with your hay problems. It has made a world of a difference for me.
