Our new cage! Very excited!

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Teejay

Teejay

Adult Guinea Pig
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Hi all

I would like to proudly unveil....drum roll......our monster new cage!
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Our 6 piggies were in three pairs - two boar/sow pairings and a pair of sows. We've long been considering the idea of bonding one of the boars/sow pairs with the sows, but there were a lot of practical considerations.

Anyway, we tfinally ook the plunge and decided to completely rearrange our lounge ;) and build our own cage using grids and a bit of correx in a wooden frame.

After about £150 and several weeks of sawing wood, cutting correx, painting wood and sewing fleece pads, etc, the cage was 'good to go' today.

So, as the cage was all brand new and neutral-smelling, we took the chance and tried the four piggies together.....and, fingers crossed, all is going really well and it's very calm and happy in the cage.

So we have Squeak and Coco in the top cage, and Pudding, Popsy, Darklis and Lima in the bottom two cages.

Happy days!

Tracey x
 
Well, mainly well done hubby! LOL! I came up with a few ideas, but he did most of the work. Oh, and I hand-sewed the fleece cage pads as well, that was my contribution to the whole thing. :))

Tracey x
 
The piggies certainly seem to like it! They've been popcorning away, even the four who are new to each other!

Tracey x
 
Now it's up and in use and we can see what space the piggies have, we think we're going to add a mezzanine level / hay loft to each cage, just to give them extra floor space and somewhere to snuggle under.

At the moment, there is an extra-large cat litter tray on each level for hay, which seems to be a hit with the piggies, but they do take up quite a lot of floor space.

Tracey x
 
Little Piggles said:
Ooh, I LIKE it! May have to steal your idea ;)
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Steal away! Actually, I based our design on one I've seen on this forum, so we're not very original ourselves, LOL!

First of all, we considered just using grids to make the three level cage, but in the end we decided on a wooden frame to make it more solid and permanent, and having cats, just using grids posed us a problem in that we needed to come up with a top.

So, a wooden frame (with a wooden top) was the solution! It's not perfect, and I'm sure we'll come up with some adaptations over the next few days to improve it, but it's a good start.

Tracey x
 
piginmuck said:
that looks awesome!
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Thanks! We originally planned to make it bigger (5 grids long) but we settled on 4 grids (plus a bit extra for the wooden frame) so that the cage would fit into our bay window.

We can't see out of the window, but hey ho.....that's a small sacrifice for giving our lovely piggies a swanky new pad!

Tracey x
 
Poppy'sMum said:
That's fabulous! I'm loving your piggies' names too lol :))
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Thank you! Pudding is just a lazy old pudding, Squeak....self explantory, hehe!......Coco is called that because of her lovely chocolate brown colouring......Darklis is a character from my favourite book (Jilly Cooper's Riders).......Lima is so called because she has a black face like a lemur....and Popsy is actually called Popsicle....my husband named her...rolleyes.....that's the last time he gets given naming responsibility, LOL!

Tracey x
 
Teejay said:
Hi all

I would like to proudly unveil....drum roll......our monster new cage!
003-4.jpg


Our 6 piggies were in three pairs - two boar/sow pairings and a pair of sows. We've long been considering the idea of bonding one of the boars/sow pairs with the sows, but there were a lot of practical considerations.

Anyway, we tfinally ook the plunge and decided to completely rearrange our lounge ;) and build our own cage using grids and a bit of correx in a wooden frame.

After about £150 and several weeks of sawing wood, cutting correx, painting wood and sewing fleece pads, etc, the cage was 'good to go' today.

So, as the cage was all brand new and neutral-smelling, we took the chance and tried the four piggies together.....and, fingers crossed, all is going really well and it's very calm and happy in the cage.

So we have Squeak and Coco in the top cage, and Pudding, Popsy, Darklis and Lima in the bottom two cages.

Happy days!

Tracey x
Click to expand...

ohhh it looks great well done to you and your hubby:)):))
 
I'm jealous, I'm thinking about going back to c&c or an adaptation of it, this looks fab.

Hope its not draughty in your bay, or the piggies wont be happy! :))
 
katiepops said:
That looks fab, well done.
I bet the piggies are loving their new home and friends!
Which bits open up?
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Thank you! The 3-grid front sections open up, the single grids are fixed (we had to have something fixed to attach the barrel bolts to, or you could just pish the doors open).

They were all very happy together this morning....and baby Lima, who's never had to negotiate a ramp before, had managed to find her way 'upstairs' in the night.

It does all feel a bit 'open' and 'exposed' though, no dark nooks and crannys to hide in like their old cages, so I threw a couple of fleeces in for them to burrow in and I've just placed an order for some fleecy hidey houses for them to escape to when they're feeling shy :)

Tracey x
 
doglovinpiggylover said:
Hope its not draughty in your bay, or the piggies wont be happy! :))
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You know, that thought did cross my mind.......it's not draughty in the bay (nice double glazed windows), but it is a little bit cooler there, with being surrounded by glass.

I've also thought ahead to the warmer weather, but we never get direct sun on those windows, so they should be fine there.

Tracey x
 
It's fab :(|) Well done to you and hubby :))
Our set ups are the feature points in our lounge, people give me odd looks when I say we have 15 piggies (can see their minds ticking away :(|)) but shows you really can have something nice for them :))
Your build is great and it's brill the intro's have worked - I'd love to open the whole top level of ours so the married couple and six girlies could live together in a 12ft pen but am too cowardly :(
 
Guinea pig slave said:
Our set ups are the feature points in our lounge
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Well, this new cage is definitely a focal point in our lounge, LOL! @)

The newly introduced foursome are getting along famously.....I've been sat watching them for the past couple of hours and they're just so funny........I've just hung a hammock onto the bars of the cage, and they're playing musical chairs with it. Lima (only about 12 weeks old) is mad about it, jumping on and off, very comical!

Tracey x
 
I saw one like this in P@H a few days ago, it was beautiful till I saw the price tag. £180 is silly as it was only two stories and they weren't seperate cages.

It really is amazing what you've achieved and much better than anything shop bought. I wish I had the money and drive to work on something like that.


Amy
x
 
Piggiepigpigs said:
Looks great, what fortunate piggies you have. :) cute aswell :laluot_29:
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They're very spoiled......Squeaky (top floor) knows that if he stands with his front feet up on the cage door, I'll open the door and give him a stroke/scratch.....so he's stading there giving me the 'puppy dog eyes' all the time! LOL!
 
*Nibbles&Nugget* said:
It really is amazing what you've achieved and much better than anything shop bought. I wish I had the money and drive to work on something like that.
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Thank you :)) It did cost quite a lot to build, about £175 when you count in all the bits and bobs we had to buy like new fleece and mattress protectors for the bedding, but like you say, shop bought ones aren't anywhere near as spacious and are very expensive in comparison.
 
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