Making Our 1st Custom Cage Today!

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winknfox

"Loving my chinchillas"
Joined
Oct 20, 2010
Messages
107
Location
Centralia,IL
My husband and I are making our babies first homemade cage today.He's at the store now buying more supplies. We have decided to make it 6' tall, 4' wide and 2' deep with a drawer under it. We are being very careful with our building supply choices. I do have a question...we bought a melamine sheet that is for the bottom of the cage...will it be safe for use for that? I am going to use fleece liners over it.
 
I made a melamine base for my cage. I covered all the edges with thin poplar, though. At first I thought maybe I could see if it was even possible for her to grab an edge to chew it, but when the store salespeople cut it, I instantly noticed that the edges aren't going to be totally smooth. So tiny chips of the laminate broke off and I figured I'd better cover all the edges my chin could possibly chew on.

A better investment would be metal to cover the edges, I just haven't figured out how to go about doing that yet.
 
I have a home made melamine cage... and originally I thought I could just put shavings over the bottom layer of melamine.... yeah, the melamine started bubbling cause of the wetness, cause it's not waterproof. You might not have this problem if you change out the fleece liners all the time, but for me -- I clean the cages before they get too bad, or too wet, and so I didn't have like actual pee sitting on the melamine, just some wet shavings here and there... but in my experience, it didn't work. But then again, fleece liners absorb in a way that shavings just... don't. So it could work. For me, though, I ended up getting a custom-sized pan made by Bass Equipment. No more problems.
 
I am probably going to go ahead with the melamine in the bottom of the drawer and then order a custom made pan to fit inside of that.
 
I have my melamine base with shavings on it. No damage to the melamine yet--but I've only had it for about 6 months.
 
4 hrs later and we have the front and back done including doors...this is alot more work than I thought!!! I think the next one will be the FN142.
 
Finally!

We finally got the cage done for the most part. Its not perfect, and I will definitely buy my next cage, but I am proud of it still. The best part is, my guys love it! It was so cute to watch them go crazy checking everything out and trying their new wheel...which by the way, we made as well.
 

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Looks great but I would take that blue wheel out ASAP. Those wheels are WAY too small and the side bars are just an accident waiting to happen. I can see a leg, tail, etc. getting caught in there and getting broke real quick. They are also way too small and can cause lasting damage to your chin's spines because they can not run in them correctly. They'll be fine with just the other wheel you have in there.
 
That cage looks great! We've thought about making our own cages as well but haven't gotten around to it.
 
That's huge!! Nice job.

I know what you mean when you say you're going to buy your next cage but your still proud of it. I might buy my next cage, but I'm thinking I might just reuse some parts of my current one when it gets too beat up. I do always brag about it, haha.

I agree with Stacie about the wheel. The one you made looks like it's much better than the blue wire one.
 
I actually already did...gave it to my mom for her rats...it was only in there because my husband wasn't sure whether I wanted to use it or not so he put it in. The big metal wheel is the one we are using...we made it ourselves...well, my husband did. Its our take on the chin spin wheel, but alot cheaper to make it ourselves.
 
Thats a pretty good looking cage. I made my first wooden cage years back, and well, it was an epic fail.
How long did it take?
 
I like how a homemade cage looks in a living area so much more than a store bought cage. It may take a bit longer, but they are just really nice cages.

You and your husband did a great job!
 
I think the cage looks beautiful and you really should feel proud of yourselves! Willl you come and build me one next? ;)
 
You guys did a great job...the best thing about homemade cages is you learn what works and doesn't and can modify the next ones
 
myself I take between about 4 hours to make a 2x2x2 melamine cage or about 8 hours to make a 2x4x2 cage with shelves and everything
 
Thank you everyone...ours measures 6' tall, 4' wide and 2' deep. Its huge, but we made sure to add enough ledges to keep them from falling directly to the bottom. They now have 2 homes in it and lots of other fun things to do. The hardest part is catching them now lol...they love running and hopping along the ledges. We used pine for everything except the drawer bottom(used melamine for it).
 
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