Cage + playpen options: need advice

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lilythepig2017

Post   » Thu Jan 11, 2018 5:43 pm


Hello

We have a very small home in the city. We got one of those terrible pet store guinea pig cages with our three month old guinea pig almost a month ago now.

We have been using a 12 square foot play pen for her during the day where she spends all her time, then at night she sleeps in her tiny junky cage. Also she is in the tiny cage if we are out.

I was looking at those c&C cages and i love them. My ideal would be have one of those cages, and have it be able to attach to a play pen that can be folded up in 2 seconds that's light weight. Do you guys know of any options like this? I see C&C cages have doors you can get and little ramps but can any of their configurations fold up fast?

Would love to know what options there are.

Thanks so much in advance

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M1dn1ght

Post   » Fri Jan 12, 2018 12:09 pm


Hi!

I have a fold-up playpen that I attached to my piggies' cage with binder clips. They have a Midwest Guinea Habitat cage (8 square feet) which folds up on its own and has two doors in it. I added the playpen by binder clipping one end to the outside corner of the cage and the other end to the diagonal opposite corner so it's kind of a wrap-around configuration with a large enclosed "yard" area just outside the cage. The playpen adds about 24 square feet of space to their living area, and I can easily unclip it and fold it up if I need to take it somewhere.

I leave the door to their cage open so they have free run of the entire 32 square foot space all the time, but I can close the door when I need to clean it and keep them out of the way. Their sleeping and eating areas are set up inside the smaller cage so it's nice and cozy for them. They have a hay hopper against the back wall that they can access from the inside of the cage, but if they are playing they can go around the other side and because it's up against the cage wall, they can access the hay from their playpen too.

You can easily find the Midwest Guinea Habitat and any small pet playpen online for a very good price. I'm not handy, so this helped alot because I didn't have to construct anything.

lilythepig2017

Post   » Fri Jan 12, 2018 7:58 pm


Thanks so much! I’ll check this out

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CavyDad
Supporter in 2018

Post   » Sat Jan 13, 2018 2:07 pm


If you decide to go the build your own route, you can do something very similar with a C&C. You can make a "gate" in the side of your cage by using zip ties to connect two grids and they will act like hinges so you can swing it open when you want to let the piggies out. If your coroplast bottom is low enough, they can just hop over into the play area. If you make a tall bottom, you can also make a cutout opening, or a gate in the coroplast they can walk through. We did this with one of our cages and it worked well.

If you don't find a playpen you like, you can also use the closet grids used for building a C&C. If you use zip ties to hold the panels together, you can actually fold it up and move it out of the way when you don't need it. You can use binder clips to either close the pen, or attach it to the sides of your cage. We usually use 3-4 zip ties to join two panels together, and you just make sure to clip off the long ends so the piggies are not interested in trying to chew on them.

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