Flooring?

[Sevvy]

I have been looking at some of the Chinchilla specific cages and some of the large & extra large small animal cages at work and in other animal stores and I now have a question about the flooring in cages.

Wire flooring or solid flooring?

I read that wire flooring can cause a tremendous amount of issues/injuries if a Chins foot gets stuck in them and so forth. But all the larger cages (anything larger than 36L x 18W x 30H, or similar dimensions) have wire flooring. The only solid floored homing I can find seems, well, rather cruel to keep a Chin in. I mean, they could move around but I could never get a wheel in there or after adding bottles, feed bowls, etc they wouldn't have much move around space.

So, can I use wire floored cages? And if not, what can I use to re-floor the bottom of the cage?

 

[alli713]

Wire cages work fine if the wire openings are 1/2" x 1/2" or smaller. Small enough that the chin can't get it's foot in the opening. The cages I used previously all had wire flooring and I actually preferred it for it's easy cleanup. I just provided lots of areas to get off the wire, like hammocks, fleece tubes, lots of wood shelves and granite tiles on the wire flooring underneath their food bowls.

 

[AZChins]

I use 1/2"x1/2" wire in my cages and I've never had a chin hurt a foot or break a leg. Anything larger can cause problems. Like Alli said...you can put in things for the chin to get off the wire should the chin want to get off of it. Ledges, tiles and other things work great but you still have everything fall right through the wire making things a bit easier to clean. Just make sure that the openings are no larger that 1/2"x1/2" because even the 1"x1/2" can allow chins to get caught and hurt their feet or legs.

 

[alli713]

One downside of wire flooring is that the wire is harder to clean, but a brush and water/vinegar mix works well to get ride of the urine buildup. You just need to keep it clean so that they don't get any infections on their feet.

 

[Sevvy]

Okay, cool. Thanks!

My boss is going to kill me now... I'll be opening up all the boxes to measure the wire openings, haha.