Cleaning nest and hoard

[Lovelyness]

Miss B sleeps in a nest which she initially instigated. She also keeps her food stash there and poops in the same place as her stash. Just wondering when I spot clean, if I should actually remove the food mixed in with the poop…I have been so far, but wondering if it’s necessary or if I should leave her stash. Also, how often should I change her nest bedding? Less often than a spot clean, but more often than a substrate change? TIA

 

[Maz]

I never change the nest bedding - unless it's pee'd in. They tend to keep it clean and dry and refurbish it regularly. I also leave the hoards until I come to do a substrate change - after 3 to 6 months - and then prune them from underneath and remove the bottom half, which is the older food (they are often quite large by then). They do sometimes leave poops in the hoard but if there aren't too many, it's not an issue. They do sometimes hoard poops out of being hard wired for food shortages (they can eat their poops to redigest vitamins). If you start to get quite a lot of poops throughout the cage I just remove some of those when spot cleaning.

Basically the more substrate, the less often the cleaning needs to be done. If nest and hoard are pee'd on though, they need removing. But even then you need to put new food back to replace the hoard and try and save an old bit of dry hoard or nest to leave behind, so it smells familiar.