What's Your Opinion On This Guinea Pig Mansion Design?

[rory89]

Hi all,

I'm going to craft a new home for my guinea pigs soon and have been playing with a few ideas. This is what I've come up with, what do you all think?

My partner thinks it's not a good idea because of the ramps, and I've read mixed opinions online.

Total floor space size is 20 square feet. The floor and ramps will be lined with pond liner and fleece, potentially with tunnels on the ramps, or just sides. The materials will cost about £100.

 

[flowerfairy]

Personally I like to give them as much continuous floor space as possible. Mine are in a c and c cage on ikea table tops.

I have recently expanded it to 12 x 2 grids to hold seven guimea pigs.

I love the plexi glass and the easy to clean flooring of your design.

 

[Wilbur&Otis]

Ooooh I love a piggie cage design chat - this looks fab - especially love the tapered legs. What software have you used to do the visual?

A couple of things I would point out / question before you go ahead...

1/ Hinge the ramps. So glad i did this - it means you can lift them for cleaning under & lets you slide a regular fleece all the way under. You might also want to consider making them longer so the angle is as shallow as possible? & I’d also maybe have the holes for each ramp right in the corner so they’re tucked away & you don’t need to tailor your fleece around them

2/ The reach. Make sure that you can easily reach all corners on each floor. I trimmed the depth of mine as realised when measuring I was going to struggle to reach the top corners when cleaning

3/ Perspex panels. Assuming you will make these easily removable for access to each floor but this is quite hard to do well... without sealing it on you get all pee and bedding trapped down the edge and finding attachments that will let you quickly remove it might be tricky?

4/ ramp covers. Personally my pigs all use the ramps when they are against a wall like this & havent needed to add tunnels. For my new pigs that were nervous of them I’ve cut strips of vetbed the width of the ramp and used hair bands round the top and bottom to fix in place. That way I can just whip the vetbed off for a wash when it needs it.

Sorry long reply - this is my fave topic as you can tell haha. Looks a great design though I would happily have this in my home. Looking forward to seeing how you get on!

 

[Wilbur&Otis]

One more tip...

To attach a water bottle someone suggested a cycle bottle cage when I built mine and it works a dream when you have no mesh like yours. (Around £5 on amazon) Just check you can fit a water bottle on the lower floors at a decent drinking height - you might have to fix it on the Perspex panels if floor above gets in the way...

 

[Flutterby]

The idea itself is good, but it is always better if possible to give as much space as you can on one single flat level. Guinea pigs aren't climbers so ramps up to extra space can't really be counted. You could create something similar that is one level on a waist height table.

 

[Wilbur&Otis]

This is what I went for and I wouldn’t change much if I did it again. So easy to clean &lots of space - the pigs do laps. Also by having ramps up both sides of the mezzanine floor no one can get cornered (I have stroppy boars that chase each other) Underneath is fab for storage or more recently I built a C&C basement for another resident.