second story with shorter sides

[aqh88]

I want to put a 2nd level on the girls 2x8 cage so they have more hay area and they can get away from each other at times. Plus I can stick a house or 2 up there and make more room in the bottom area. The problem is the cage is already 2 grids off the floor and I can just reach the back corner leaning over the grids. If I put a 2nd level on with grids in front of it I won't be able to reach over yet another set of grids to get the guinea pigs. Chris could barely do that and he's a foot taller than me. I was going to make the 2nd level run along the back half of the cage and then over the current 2x2 hay area. Do you think an 8" coroplast edge on the 2nd level would be enough to keep guinea pigs from jumping over and down into the bottom level? We tested it a little with Cinnamon and the boys cage. Their cage is on the floor with 8" high coroplast and the front grids swing open for cleaning. Cinnamon couldn't manage to jump over the coroplast and back into his cage until Chris shoved his butt a little to help him but Rolo has jumped over the 14" grids when out for floortime. I will put up grids on any area they could possibly jump out and fall all the way to the floor (42" down). I also need to figure out how to put in a curved ramp that only takes up a 1x1 grid area so it is confined to the hay area and doesn't take away any space from the fleece running area.

[ScottandDebbie]

Originally Posted by aqh88

The problem is the cage is already 2 grids off the floor and I can just reach the back corner leaning over the grids. If I put a 2nd level on with grids in front of it I won't be able to reach over yet another set of grids to get the guinea pigs.

Hi aqh88,

I just added a second floor to our cage as well.
Our's is build on table legs, so adding the second floor required either really long arms, or designing the cage so that we could get inside the cage using a design adjustment.

I designed the cage so that the front is hinged.
The upper floor of the cage now open downwards towards the lower floor.

I also cut the center three front grids shorter than the outer two. The outer two grids are fixed, and the center three are hinged.

You can see a portion of what I am chatting about from my cage picture at http://cavycages.com/forum/showthrea...681#post134681

The hinged front works well.
The shorter pieces of grid is nice, in that.... I can put my hand in the cage and pet the boys, or give them a snack without having to open the cage.

Let me know if you would like me to take a front picture of the cage.
It's not finished.... but happy to, if it might help you.

[aqh88]

Cut grids would make it easier to look at the pigs but there's a problem with that. Rolo uses grids like a ladder so cutting them as short as the coroplast and using it instead of extra high smooth coroplast sides would be like inviting her to climb over and take a dive down to the bottom. She's actually tried to climb all the way from the floor to 3 grids up where her cage is. Of course she didn't make it but she made over 1 grid high before she started to slip and Chris grabbed her. Hinging it might work especially since it's divided into two 3 grid long sections so each section could be opened but I'm not sure if unclipping it to reach the pigs would make it seem like too much work to catch them just for short periods of attention. Right now someone is always out because whenever we walk by the cage and see someone sitting on a house or running around we get them out for awhile. Occasionally Chris also wakes them up out of their houses if he really wants to hold a certain one. I think they'd learn that laying on the top level means they won't get caught as much. Well some of them are that smart at least.

[ScottandDebbie]

Rolo sounds very much like Fizbit when he was young. Rolo sounds so cute.

Well, so much for cutting the grids, huh? We certainly don't want Rolo to take a dive down to the bottom.

My hinged grids are closed by a simple tied ribbon at the top. (I didn't use any connectors to close the door.) I first knotted the ribbon to the main frame of the cage, and tied the grids together to close. It's almost too easy.

Thursday nights, is cage cleaning night.
So as soon as I clean that *dirty* cage, <grin>, I'll post a picture of the door. Can't have a messy piggy house going out on the web
My boys would never forgive me.

[ScottandDebbie]

aqh88,

Here is a picture of the cage. We are just about finished. Just a few more items to attend to and we are done.

I have to recharge my camera otherwise I would have posted some close ups.

The three short grids in the front, second floor, are hinged as one big drop down door.

[aqh88]

I was thinking of trying a double sided snap which would be even easier than a ribbon. The only problem I realized is my cage has spots that come toward the front to give them more space and stabilize it. I had trouble keeping the entire thing from falling toward the front since the cage is 8 grids long. To get to those areas would require opening 2 spots but if those spots were snapped to each other so one snap undid both it might work. I'll have to take a picture of the framework I setup for the 2nd level.