I use very large reusable puppy pads for one of my elderly boas (over 8ft, around 35lbs). These have worked best for her and her needs recently as when she pees it was just way too much for paper towels to handle. And the papertowels would just bunch up whenever she’d move around. I used to use soil but with her age she seems to have become super prone to scale rot, keeping her on the pads has fixed that issue.
I’m wondering what chemicals others used to wash pads like these? I’ve been using white vinegar and an unscented detergent but the urates and stains don’t seem to ever go away completely.
I pull off as much as I can before washing, they are left to air dry once clean.
As long as you are being extremely careful with the pads. There have been cases where sometimes the snake will just spontaneously bite and swallow the pad. Usually it’s something you see more during feeding though. Just to avoid anything else going on with your old noodle.
I honestly just run my pet pads through the laundry on their own. Heavy duty, some detergent and a bit of bleach. Usually it washes out without an issue or much odor. I was using them for my cats though.
With vinegar you can probably do a presoak to not water it down too much in the washer, then just run it through a cycle.
If you’re hand washing I would probably keep to the vinegar but maybe 2x a month do a dedicated bleach cleaning instead to make sure there’s nothing getting missed
I have heard that, and experienced it with a bearded dragon rescue who was going through a quarantine and on pads for the time- luckily I walked in the room right as he started chowing down. Had to wrestle him for it
I feed her food on top of her hides, theyre upsidedown cement mixing tubs, nice and flat and she usually keeps the food on there. She’s gotten more gentle with her eating which helps.
I also check her while she eats to make sure she hasn’t decided to eat them as well, i think making sure the food isn’t dripping anything helps too so it isn’t spreading tasty smells everywhere. Also smaller prey items.
I want to avoid bleach, I have parrots and the washer is right next to our furnace so it ends up turning in to an unintentional air freshener lol.
Oof yeah with parrots and the furnace that’s definitely more difficult.
I haven’t used that product, but maybe for a more animal safe product you can use F10 as a soak first? It’s easier to find it for sale now online compared to when I first started using it. I had chinchillas at the time so similar issue to parrots.
I used to use white vinegar, baking soda, and some unscented laundry soap to wash the fleece liners for my chinchilla. I’d add all the cleaning products, let the washer fill with water and slosh around a bit, then I’d stop the washer cycle and let everything soak overnight, and then restart the washer and let the cycle finish in the morning. I found that letting everything soak overnight really helped with stains and odors.
We do this every 6 months with all of our human clothes/bedding, you’d be amazed and disgusted at the color the water turns with a hot soak and "clean clothes’
We do the same as you with white vinegar and unscented laundry soap, but we also add borax into the big hot bathtub of clothing soup, would borax be reptile-pads safe?
My denim stuff (shorts and jeans) always leeches the most horrible black color into the water, and I wash those items way more than is recommended as is! I think part of it must be dye from the “blue” jeans, but I shudder to think about the rest of it
We do 1 part borax OR baking soda, 1 part vinegar, to 2 parts laundry soap in a standard sized bathtub.
We fill the tub enough to cover the clothes, as hot as it goes, and we often add a kettle of very hot water too.
Leave to soak 30 min, stirring every now and then. You can leave them way longer (we’ve done up to 2 hours) and also drain and refill the tub if you need to (repeat as needed, or until you aren’t terrified of the water color).
We’ve never had any shrinkage or damage issues with standard sheets, clothes, etc, but I’d imagine if it was clothing that required special care already (ie lace, special fabrics, etc), there is potential for damage.
After you remove them, wash and dry with your usual routine, and bam! Clean fresh clothes/sheets with brigher whites
Its been a routine in my family as long as I can remember; I would come home from college for winter or summer break and soak my clothes this way and it was horrible to see what the bad dorm washing machines just weren’t cleaning out of the clothes. You’ll notice a difference, I promise!
Is there any advantage to doing it the bathtub, vs. just letting the washing machine fill up, stopping the cycle, and letting them soak in the washer? I’ve always just soaked them in the washing machine itself.
Then again, my washer is ancient, so it’s super easy to just stop it mid-cycle. I don’t know if it’s that easy with newer models that have more automated electronic stuff.
Probably not? Depending on the size of the tub, it could allow the clothes to spread out more and get more surface area contact to the solution?
Probably not a huge difference, our washer is just a horrifying eldritch creature so we use it minimally for small loads and just use the bathtub for our big soaks
