New home

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FlyingGuineas

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Hey,

We recently brought a three tiered new home for our 2 Guinea Pigs Hunny and Molly.
The cage is split into more like 4 sections I guess. I'll upload a pic when poss. But the basic design is 2 trays one on the bottom one in the middle. There are 4 wooden shelves one placed on the bottom with a ramp from the tray to the shelf, then a ramp from this shelf to the whole in the middle of the next tray. There's another shelf on this level with a ramp from the second tray to this shelf then another ramp on this shelf going up to a shelf at the very top.

We thought they'd like the extra space and would find having more room to run about fun and exciting.
Unfortunately this doesn't appear to be the case. We put them in their new home on Saturday evening and since then they have stayed solely on the bottom tier and seem too look rather sadly at me as the cage is smaller in width than what their old cage was, so at the moment with them living solely on one tier its as if they think we have put them in a smaller home.

I've tried putting them on the different tiers. Nothing seems to help, I even put them ON the ramps trying to show them that their are ramps to use to get to and from the different areas but they just won't use them!

Currently I've taken out the ramps since they aren't using them and made the bottom shelf accessible via jumping. It means they cannot access the top area at all but they weren't trying to before so its not really any loss :p
I'm unsure what to do because both Pigs have actually fallen through the whole in the middle of the second tray when I did have the ramps in and i'm concerned they will hurt themselves :(

Does anyone have any ideas what we could do/use to encourage them to move around between these tiers?


 
They usually seem to get the hang of using ramps after a couple of days. You could try putting a trail of veggies down the ramp :))

What were the ramps made of? If they were slippery or very steep then they might have been scared of them. But that could be modified.
 
CiaraPatricia said:
They usually seem to get the hang of using ramps after a couple of days. You could try putting a trail of veggies down the ramp :))

What were the ramps made of? If they were slippery or very steep then they might have been scared of them. But that could be modified.
Click to expand...

I tried that, they get fresh lettuce/spinach/cabbage ect every morning so the on the Sunday I put the veg a bit at the bottom and a bit at the top of each ramp, then some in the middle too. But by the evening it was all still there :(

They like these chocolate/milk drop things i buy as a treat too so I placed some of those up every ramp too to try and coax them but that also didn't work.

The ramps are made out of wood. Most aren't steep but the one that goes from the shelf to the second tray is kinda steep. And I do think the ramps could use more grip. Perhaps by having some more raised pieces of wood to have steps.
I think they are scared but I don't really know how to assist them with that -.- I've tried everything I can think of and its not made any difference to them. They just keep trying to jump up and down the shelves instead and as i say they've both ended up FALLING.
 
Unfortunately Piggies dont bear well to climbing, they much prefer having a large house on one level.
However for people on here that have ramps modification is the key so the piggies feel safe using them.

Post a picture up and we could possibly offer better advice.

I would be looking at changing the ramps to tunnels and modifying the ramps so they arnt as steep.
 
These are some photos people have posted on here, hope they don't mind me using them to show you :)

Some people attach fabric tunnels to the ramps, because it scares the guinea pigs less to go through the tunnels
ramp2.jpg



Or you can make kinda steps of bits of wood to give more grip or add a bit of carpet or vet bed or something to give it more grip aswell :)
ramp3.jpg


ramp1.jpg
 
And my piggies are out in hutches/runs for the summer now, and they love going up and down their ramo :) It's great exercise for them, they really seem to love it. But it's not very steep, I think that's the key, and it has good grip.
 
Ok I just went to take some pics. Bear in mind I took the ramps out the cage since they weren't using them and were having some accidents so I just kinda placed a couple of the ramps where they would be/were to give you guys an idea of what the ramps are like and the cage.

a31h53.jpg

124e9t4.jpg

dw9zzk.jpg


Edit: we did consider putting material on the ramps problem is the amount of washing needed for that as they will probably mess them up terribly within a day or two -.-
 
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Salt n Peppers mum said:
Mmmm.... them ramps look very scary for a guinea pig :...
Click to expand...

yeah exactly. which is why we are currently trying to look into alternative methods of them getting up to that second tray.

The very top shelf is negligible as that shelf could in theory be placed between the second tray and the bottom tray meaning that middle ramp could be split into two sections which could make it less steep. If you see what i mean -.-

Its just a case of knowing what to do. Which is what we don't really know atm
:(
Anything we find on the net is either too small or not applicable.
We were wondering if we fitted them with some sides and made steps if that would help make them less scary.
 
ramps

do yours scrabble when you put them on the ramp?
ours did even though we put in extra treads. Eventually we made a very long raft of twigs by copying the design of the hidies made out of twigs.

Just get enough twigs cut them to the same length as the width of the ramps .

Drill 2 holes through each twig the same distance from the end. (about 3/4 inch from the end worked for us)

next get some garden wire, we used galavnised, not plastic coated and thread the twigs onto the wire, keep going until you have a length as long as the ramp.

lastly attatch this to the top of your ramp.

It seemed our pigs felt much more secure and were soon zooming up and down it and now it seems to be their favourite hiding place.
 
Phew, those ramps look really steep to me :...
Could you not place a low level hidey at the end of the ramps ? I've seen pics on here that some members have done this and it looks really good although may take up precious space.
My OH put little bannisters on our piggies ramps to stop them feeling nervous when venturing slowly when we first put ramps in - they race around up and down playing so it did the trick :(|)
 
Rob and Sam said:
do yours scrabble when you put them on the ramp?
ours did even though we put in extra treads. Eventually we made a very long raft of twigs by copying the design of the hidies made out of twigs.

Just get enough twigs cut them to the same length as the width of the ramps .

Drill 2 holes through each twig the same distance from the end. (about 3/4 inch from the end worked for us)

next get some garden wire, we used galavnised, not plastic coated and thread the twigs onto the wire, keep going until you have a length as long as the ramp.

lastly attatch this to the top of your ramp.

It seemed our pigs felt much more secure and were soon zooming up and down it and now it seems to be their favourite hiding place.
Click to expand...

Interesting idea. I shall mention this!

Mine didn't scrabble as much as just try to jump straight off the ramp. This wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't for the fact that where they were looking to jump was the whole in the tray so they'd have just fallen through it -.-

But yeah this does seem more of an issue with the fact the ramp is wooden and thus rather smooth. We were looking at this kinda thing:
Bendy log tunnel
But they aren't long enough for the job and the larger they are the wider they get and end up being too wide! Nightmare!
 
Salt n Peppers mum said:
3tier.jpg


My piggies have this cage and are up and down the ramps like there is no tomorrow, it took them a while but now they are fine :))

you may want to move the wooden shelves around a bit so the ramps are not so steep until they get used to it. the ramp from the bottom to the top is always the steepest, one of my ramps has deeper grooves cut into it and they are fine with that as well now as it has good grip.

persevere with it, we got them used to it by helping them up the ramps to start with -c
Click to expand...
 
Thanks,

for all the replies and help with this topic. We did some shifting about with the shelves yesterday in an effort to attempt to make the shelves accessible via jumping. We seem to have achieved this goal as lunchtime today I went to check on the guineas and found Molly on the second floor of her new home ^_^
Later when it was time for their run around Hunny had joined her :D

Molly has been there all day now she really seems to like it up there, at least I hope that's the case and she isn't just stuck and can't get down xD
 
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