Floor Time: Minimum space for floortime - basement?

[girlypigs]

Our girls have been with us 8 months now and are still very skittish by nature and as a result we are still having a problem with floortime. For the first few months every day we would roll up the rug and set up for floor time and the pigs would just huddle in the hidey. No amount of food/ hay would coax them out. An hour or two later we would tidy up and put them back in their 2x5. After the first few months this just seemed futile as floortime just seemed to stress them to the nines and they would be jumpy for the next few hours. Not wanting to give up completely we only did floortime at the weekends, but again the pigs just seemed stressed. I don't want to give up on this altogether so I was wondering whether I could set up a permenant pen in my basement with grids/plastic table cloth and fleece. It's a lot quieter down there and maybe they would venture out of their hidey once in a while? Is the basement OK for floortime? Their cage is in our den so they would only spend floortime in the basement. Also what should be the minimum size pen for floortime?
Many thanks in advance for your help.

[akstrohm]

The basement should be fine as long as there aren't drafts and it isn't too cold.

Be sure you have lots of hideys. The more hideys you have, the more likely they are to come out because they will always have a safe place nearby. Try hiding little bits of food throughout the cage as well.

There's no minimum size for floortime. Just make it as big as you can. The point is just to give them space to exercise and a new area to explore.