Rosewood Naturals Soft & Safe Bedding

Give a hamster bedding and it will take the whole lot apart and rebuild it somewhere else. That is the job, and it means the property that matters in a nesting material is not softness — it is fibre length, because a fibre long enough to be spun into a strand is a fibre long enough to wrap around a leg.

This one is kapok, taken from the seed pod of the kapok tree. Rosewood describe the fibres as short and soft as silk, and specifically as fibres that cannot be spun or made into string, which is what makes a nest possible without a thread forming. It is 100% natural, sustainably harvested, and the fibre is hypoallergenic, anti-bacterial and biodegradable. Rosewood put it up as the alternative to the coloured fluff bedding it sits next to on the shelf, and it suits hamsters, mice and gerbils, and pet birds too.

• 100% natural kapok, from the kapok tree seed pod
• Short fibres that cannot be spun or made into string
• Hypoallergenic, anti-bacterial and biodegradable
• Sustainably harvested
• For hamsters, mice and gerbils; also suitable for pet birds
• 20g pack

Twenty grams is genuinely small, and kapok weighs almost nothing. Rosewood publish no volume or litre figure against the pack, so a weight tells you very little about how much material you are getting — expect a nest's worth rather than a cage's worth, and price the job by the bag rather than by the gram. There is no guidance on how often to replace it either, and no instruction on how much to give a single animal. If you are bedding a whole cage rather than topping up a nest, this is not the pack size to do it with.

Who it's for: keepers of a hamster, mouse or gerbil who have read the warnings about spun fluff bedding and want the alternative — and bird keepers looking for nesting material.