Guinea Pig Cage – Choosing a Home for Your Cavy
One of the best things about getting a new guinea pig is choosing the cage it will live in. You can select a cage from a range of options and build a fantastic house it will love. There are some homes that are let the guinea pig run free and enjoy a lot of exercise. You will need to keep an eye on your pig, however, because they are more likely to get into trouble this way. Regardless, a spacious cage is very important.
The larger your guinea pig’s cage, the better, but most people are often restricted by money and space in their home. However, you will need enough room that the cavy can run and walk with ease. They will use some parts of their cage to go the bathroom since litter training a guinea pig is a distasteful job for even the biggest guinea pig lover. Six square feet is the bare minimum for your pig. That might sound like a lot, but it’s only 2 feet by 3 feet and that’s not a huge amount of floor space for an animal that size.
The cages for your guinea pig can be open at the top or closed, but you will need to make sure that your guinea pig cannot get out. They can’t climb and aren’t big jumpers, but they can manage to get out of a low-walled cage. Most of the time, you will need at least a foot or more in height. If you have ramps inside the cage, you will want a taller cage for better protection.
Multi-level cages are a great choice for all guinea pigs. The variety gives them plenty of options for exercise and happiness. You will want ramps with a gentle slope and very solid to support the animal. Walking on plastic coating wire isn’t healthy for their feet so avoid this.
If you expand your animals to have more than one guinea pig, be sure to expand your cage as well. You will want to have more than one cage if you have two males (especially if there is a female present or nearby.) The male cavies will want to fight each other to see who is dominant and has mating privileges. Sometimes, you can design the cage to just have more room and more places to go to accommodate both animals.
There are different types of corrugated plastic called Colorplast that can be great choices for wall and floor materials. Make sure that the guinea pig doesn’t chew and ingest the material since this would be awful for their digestive systems. Since guinea pigs’ teeth grow throughout their lifetime, they will eat their cages to help with their teeth. Keep toys nearby to prevent that problem.
Metal and plastic grids are another way to build your cage for your animal. You can buy these grids in a range of sizes and hook them together for a big, multi-area cage that is simple, yet effective.
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