Product Review: Prevue Hendryx Nature's Hideaway Grass Tunnel

Today we're reviewing Prevue Hendryx's Nature's Hideaway Grass Tunnel. This is a company I don't believe we've ever tried products from before, which always makes us a little nervous. We generally trust Oxbow products; we tend to like them, and even on the rare occasion we're not crazy about an Oxbow product, we at least trust them not to put anything in their products that guinea pigs obviously shouldn't have (like peanuts). But who the heck is Prevue Hendryx? We've only seen them on Amazon.com, never in pet stores. According to their website, however, "Prevue Pet Products, Inc. is the largest and oldest manufacturer of pet cages, toys and accessories in the world today, dating back to 1869." But does being around for a long time mean they know how to make good guinea pig products? Let's find out!

The description on the front of this product says: "A natural woven grass activity center for your small animal. Satisfies their natural instincts to burrow, explore and nest." As we've mentioned before, it always makes us a little nervous when products are not guinea pig-specific. It doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with a product that's designed for "small animals", but it does raise red flags that it might not be appropriate in terms of size, nutrition, and so on.

The size of the product is approximately 13.5"L by 6" diameter, which should be enough for us to fit through.

Looks like we've got a new product to review.

Do we want to chew on it?

No, let's crawl through it instead!

We had fun crawling through this product, and we were just about to give it a positive review, when we decided we should double-check the materials, just to be on the safe side. The materials listed in this product are: "couch grass 98%; plant cane 1%; burlap 5%; sisal rope 5%." Couch grass seems to be fine. Plant cane appears to be "A stalk or shoot of sugar cane," and while you shouldn't feed sugar cane by itself to guinea pigs (too much sugar, as you might expect), we're guessing this might be okay in this product since it's only 1%. Some people have expressed concern about sisal rope as well, saying it could unravel after chewing, although we're not clear why that's a concern. (Perhaps because we might eat it afterwards?) Burlap, however, turns out to be bad news: "The danger is that it will wad up in their digestive tracts and cause a blockage." (This is probably also why the sisal rope unraveling was a concern.) The humans quickly took this thing away from us, considering themselves lucky that we didn't eat any burlap. Just to be on the safe side, they're going to watch us to make sure we're eating and pooping normally.

Although the humans clearly should have done more research before letting us try this thing, I think they feel bad enough as it is, so we'll let them off the hook. Prevue Hendryx, on the other hand, should be ashamed of themselves. You've been in business since 1869, and still don't know what's safe to put in guinea pig products? We give Prevue Hendryx's Nature's Hideaway Grass Tunnel 1/5 stars.