Bar spacing for adult chin

[ysy]

Hi everyone,

One of my girls is outgrowing her cage. She came to me at 3 months and was very shy and small. She is now 2 years old and has grown up but is still a little on the small side. I decided to get her a bigger cage but didn't want to purchase a chinchilla cage as the chin cages sold here are usually too small or have plastic in them and way overpriced.

I saw a nice dog crate that i can convert into a chin cage and bought it. When i saw it, i thought it perfect, just the right size and very sturdy. But when the cage arrived, i looked at the spacing and it seemed a little too wide. Measured it and it is about 1.5 inches apart. Is that safe for chins? I don't want any broken legs or my chin getting into trouble trying to escape.

Please advise!

 

[JessiLynnCVT]

Personally I don't think any dog crate can be converted into a large enough cage for a chinchilla to live in. They need much more vertical space than a dog crate can offer. I would be looking into ferret cages if I were in your position.

 

[Spoof]

The 1.5" bar spacing is too wide for an adult chinchilla. I have seen them go right through depending on their head size.

You can look for cat or kitten cages as well as bird cages, they can all be converted. JessiLynn, anything over 16 x 16 x 16" is big enough for an adult chinchilla. It might not be big enough to give you the warm fuzzies, but they are content to live their lives in that space. If you give a chin a double story ferret nation some use the whole cage, some sit on the same shelf in the same small area for years. Chins are funny that way.

For an adult chinchilla you can use the cube squares that have the 1" x 1" spacing as well, just use wire to bind them together. I've seen people build some pretty neat stuff.

 

[Gumby and Elmo]

I can talk from experience, I custom made a chin cage for my boys yrs ago with 1.5 " bar spacings, only to find Elmo sitting on my sofa the next morning....
Gumby wasn't able to get out first day, but by evening, I saw him sitting on top of his cage,,.... I had to wrap the cage with chicken wire to secure it, until the new cage came.
So expensive lesson learnt, all my cages have no more than 1" spacings.

Also to add, I recently bought a playpen with 1.5" bar spacings, I thought, meh, it's only playtime, I can watch them if they try to squeeze thru, so when I was playing with my girls, Toffee, my smaller girl, she weighs about 500g, went right thru like there was nothing there, me and hubby had a good laugh, and now we have fleece wrapped around the playpen so toffee can't squeeze thru.

 

[ysy]

Thanks for all your advice! The problem is i have already bought the cage before i realised the bar spacings were too wide.

I popped Lancy (my chin, also around 500g) in for a trial, she was really stressed out by the huge cage and got out easily within the hour. I was watching her though so she didn't get into trouble. Looks that i need to do some major reinforcing. She's back in her smaller cage and she really seems happy to be "home". Silly girl.

Edit: ferret cages are not an option because it's not available here and will cost me an arm and a leg to get it shipped around the world if i can even find some place willing to ship it. So i am looking at local options first.