Hi all,
The other day my new cage was delivered, my dream cage would be a critter nation but in the UK they run for around £300 (about $500 for anyone in the USA), As I have 3 Chins that I want new cages for thats a bit too much for me.
Instead I found 2 tier cage on ebay for £100 which I have made adjustments to.
A few words on the cage:-
Overall the build quality is good there was an issue where 2 of the holes were not threaded when they should have been making it impossible to insert the bolts. Luckily I have a set of taps so was able to put my own thread on this. One of the catches on the lower tier was not positioned correctly and had to be adjusted. Besides these minor issues, once the cage was constructed it felt solid and for the money I really think this is the best that you can get in the UK.
It comes with a plastic slide out tray that fits underneath a wire floor, the second floor is also wire and it comes with 2 metal shelves and 3 , metal ramps. The tray, floors, ramps and shelves are all removeable so I took them out straight away as it wasnt what I wanted, It was at that point that I took the picture above.
I decided that rather than having custom steel pans constructed that I would tile the floors.
I also wanted guards on the floors so I started by building these, I used 1/2" Plywood as the bases which I got from a local saw mill as off-cuts for around £4 each. I cut them to size so that the bottom one woud fit flush into the cage and the top floor would cover about 3/4 of the cage leaving room for her to jump up there. I used Kiln dried pine from wikes for the guards 20mmx50mm this came in 1.8 meter lengths, I bought a pack of 10 for around £12 which is much more that I needed but its always good to have more for repairs and future projects! I used a mitre saw to cut these pieces to size at 45 degree angles and fixed them from under the plywood with wood screws.
I tiled these boxes with Glossy black marble effect tiles that I also picked up at wikes. I got a box of 17 of these for £12. Once they were cut to fit i used no more nails to stick them to the the plywood and grouted them with black waterproof grout.
I then went about making the shelves that i wanted. I used more kiln dried pine from wikes for the shelves this was 20mm by 140mm, came in 1.8m lengths and i got it in what I think was a pack of 5 for about £20. I made the guards from the same wood as before again cut to length with mitre saw at 45 degree angles where necessary. I attached them to the shelves from underneath by drilling through the shelf into the guards and hammering doweling into the holes. I used 2 pieces of dowel per guard. I know that this fixed them well when i realized I had fixed one upside down and had to pry it apart again!
I also made a hay feeder and a house out of various pieces of wood as mentioned above, these were also fixed together with the "dowel method" explained above. Once they were all finished they looked like this.
All of these pieces were sanded down before bieng put into the cage.
After this most of the hard work was done and it was a case of fitting everything into the cage.
The bottom floor required no fixing as it fit snugly into the inlay designed for the included mesh floor. The top floor was fixed to the inbuilt ledge to the left and attached to the side of the cage by drilling holes through the guards and putting 6mm bolts through the bars with large washers to hold it in place.
For the shelves I used woodscrews into shelves themselves with a combination of large washers and mending plates, i pre drilled the screw holes to avoid any splitting of the wood.
The hay box was attached with 6mm bolts and washers againn for easy removal (I intend to replace the nuts with wingnuts) and the house was just placed in.
Finally I put in several fleece pieces that my partner Emma had been slaving away at while I was doing all this, blankets for both floors (3 sheets thick) a hammock and a PVC tube cover for a piece of PVC tubing that I had cut earlier.
This is the finished product.
This project was done in a day and overall I am very pleased with the result and Poppy seems very happy in her new home. I think I will make some alterations/additions in the future and very soon creating a whole new cage for Willow.
I will be starting an almost identical project soon and was planning on making some youtube tutorials. Im not sure if I am allowed to post those on here but if I am and people are interested then please let me know!
