Cage question

[Nerdasaurous]

Hi all this is my first post here and I have a question. I will be getting my first Chin in a few days and it comes with a nice metal cage but the shelves on it are hard plastic. I know this is a big no-no for chinchillas but it will only be a temporary home for the little guy till I can get a better cage in about two months. My question is, how bad for the Chin will it be to stay in that cage for a little while?

 

[greychins]

I would remove the plastic. We've had impacted chins here at the rescue and you would be amazed at how tiensy-tiny the piece of plastic was that impacted them. It's not like they have to chew the shelf in half, they just have to eat a little little piece.

Even with it being a temp cage, you should be able to add some wooden shelves to it. They're not hard to make, you can usually get home depot or another hardware store to cut the wood to the lengths you need, and I've seen some people screw hooks into the end of shelves and use those to hook the shelves onto the cage bars. There's also a way to attach the shelves with bolts and wingnuts, and I think there's a tutorial on here as to how to do that. But for temp, you could probably use the hooks.

 

[DoGooder]

Nerdasaurous, another option is metal sheets or stone/ceramic tiles. I got some slate tiles at Walmart's online store for about $4.50 per square foot including shipping. I also use rabbit nest metal floorboards for my cage's flooring. I got 17 x 10 floorboards for $2.60 each at mortonjones.com and they shipped quickly from the West Coast to my East Coast home.

Metal and slate are easy to clean with soap and water and when I vacuum them they look clean in a snap. Wood is is a very popular flooring and I'm sure chins like it but I live in zone 5b which has hot, humid summers and metal and slate provide a cool floor which my chinchilla likes. She sweeps aside her bedding so she can sleep on the cold metal floorboards. Another advantage of flat flooring whether wood, metal or tile is that it's easier on chinchilla's feet and they're less likely to get a limb trapped between the metal cage bars.

DoGooder

 

[Nerdasaurous]

Thank you both for the options. He has been in that plastic cage for a while now and i can see tiny little marks on some parts of the plastic. Should I take him to a vet once I get him to make sure he is ok?

 

[greychins]

DoGooder --> how are you attaching the metal/slate as shelving? Or are you just saying they work well for flooring?

 

[DoGooder]

greychins, I use the metal sheets only for the floors. I have a two-story cage, but I wish I had a single compartment cage the same size so my chinchilla could move more freely. The attached photo is of the first floor where the slate is; the second floor is all metal.

The metal sheets I got from Morton Jones are designed with a groove in the center, so I place the sheets over one another like shingles on a roof and the groove holds the sheets together preventing them from being shoved forward. Also the trays, slate, etc. secure the sheets to the floor so my chin can't move them. Before I had cardboard pieces that she liked to move around. One thing I noticed after taking pictures of the cage architecture is that the metal sheets are starting to rust already so I'm not sure how long they will last.

I got a pack of 10 slate tiles but I only use 3 right now. I plan on creating interesting architecture with them but I have to get hardware for that so for the time being I just put a tile on top of the nest box in the back of the room, then I added two tiles to create tunnels. The tunnel tiles are secured by the groove on the floor and the edge of the cage. I tested them and even I can't move them so my little chinchilla can't move them either.

DoGooder

 

[InkedupTara]

If you end up buying a Ferret nation cage, you can get a custom sheet metal pan that fits the cage from Bass Pans too.

 

[DoGooder]

InkedupTara, thank you so much for the Bass company recommendation! I found pans that fit my cage! I shopped a long time for aluminum sheets and accidentally injured myself trying to cut an aluminum sheet for a cage floor. That's when I decided to use the nest box panels temporarily until I got a metal blade for my rotary saw to cut the aluminum to fit the cage, but now I can just order perfect specially made trays.

DoGooder

 

[InkedupTara]

I love their pans, they may come a little dented, but a rubber mallot (sp) will bang them right out. UPS likes to dent the pans. You're welcome

 

[mistywaterwoman]

Thank you both for the options. He has been in that plastic cage for a while now and i can see tiny little marks on some parts of the plastic. Should I take him to a vet once I get him to make sure he is ok?

As long as he is pooping a lot of nice black tic tacs, he should be fine.