My chin keeps chewing the plastic bits on his cage - any way I can stop this?

[ladyhertford]

This is probably a really daft question.

Anyhow, the shelves and ramps in my chins cage are made of plastic. As is the pee-guard. He has plenty of wooden stuff to chew on in his cage as well as a hay tunnel thing, and a couple of massive chew toy things. But it seems he would rather chew on his pee guard (even though it's outside the cage, he sticks his nose through and chews on it) and today I've caught him chewing on his plastic shelves.

I know they need to constantly knaw. But surely nibbling on plastic would be bad for him?

Again, apologies if this is really daft. I just didn't know who else to ask.

Ta

 

[Stackie]

The only way you can keep him from doing it is removing all the plastic. Which, in this case, I highly recommend you do. I have had a chin actually ingest plastic and get an impaction from it. We were able to save him with rigorous medication and hand feeding (thankfully he didn't have to have surgery) but the plastic left scar tissue in his intestines and he still has some problems from it.

 

[6Dusters]

You could try to wrap the guards in fleece. Just a thought.

 

[Riven]

I agree with getting rid of the plastic all together. Not doing so is kind of like saying I'm going to put this poison on the other side of this gate my 2 year old can reach through and I hope it doesn't eat it. While some chins aren't affected by eating small amounts of plastic, some are.

 

[Dreamlite]

The safest thing to do is to remove the plastic and replace it with wooden shelves. You can't make a chin stop chewing what is in its cage.

 

[cosmo]

Noobie advice here, but I just set up my cage and had to remove all the plastic and make wood shelves etc. Really easy to do. I have some pic's a few threads down in this section called "critique my cage please".

you could make new pee guards out of 1x3 pine for cheap, prob $5
and shelves; 1x8x10 is about $10, box of screws $5, box of big washers $8 and have a decent amount of shelving for cheap

Edit, actually I was told chin's don't like ramps, but would rather hope from shelf to shelf.

 

[Wolfnrun]

I use fleece liners and I went to staples to get binder clips and clip them to the pan. They pulled the fleece over and they nibbled on the pan a little. I wouldn't sweat the small stuff

 

[LYChinchillas]

Wood - namely kiln-dried pine - is inexpensive, easy to customize, and chin-safe! It might be a hassle to make the initial swap, but definitely well worthwhile. You'll find its benefits are awesome, too - it encourages chewing inside the cage, promotes dental health, and you'll never have to worry about plastic blockage or impaction. The small bits of plastic probably won't harm your chin initially, but the whole point is that you never know when it could.