I need ideas other than double grids...

I once used chicken wire to prevent my cats from getting to the pigs. It's cheap and really works.

I am currently using 2 different things to baby proof.

On the cage side that has higher coroplast - I put poster board between coroplast and the grid. It is working fine and is inexpensive. I have not seen any chewing or even attempts to get it loose. You can use twist ties or cable ties to hold in place on top if necessary.

I also have left over plastic that is hard and clear from actual child proofing our balcony and stairs in our home. This works great on the front side of the cage. Again I stuck it down behind the coroplast and I have it connected with cable ties at the top. I keep this on the back of some of my cages so that hay and debris does not fall out. I like it because it is clear. It is not plastic wrap - it comes in roles and it is hard, almost like the plastic used in packaging. I am not sure if you could get something like it at a hardware store or not.

I'll have to check on the chicken wire. I can't use the poster board, I have a chewer who will eat them completely (I tried it already!), she chews any plastic I put in the cage, and the only thing she hasn't succeeded in chewing apart is the pigloos! She even tries to chew the metal grids! Also my grids are on the inside of my coroplast, with only a 2 inch coroplast border, so whatever I use has to be able to be zip tied onto the single wall of grids that I want to leave in place.

I would just run the fleece up the sides higher and clip it, making sure there are no gaps they can reach.

cfoster1966 said:

I would just run the fleece up the sides higher and clip it, making sure there are no gaps they can reach.

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That's what I did for my babies, but if she has chewers, that might not work very well. I used binder clips to hold the fleece in place.. my pigs are not chewers though, so I haven't had any problems with this set up:



For chewers, I would suggest hardware cloth or chicken wire.. both are relatively inexpensive, and should do the trick. Keep in mind with the chicken wire that there are two sizes of mesh.. you want the smaller one, they'd be able to get out of the bigger stuff just as easily as the cubes.

Oh, and while I'm staring right at it, and it seems obvious.. closet shelving might be an option as well. The 12" wide stuff is only around $7 for a 6 foot length.. I'm not sure what the longer ones run, but they sell longer ones too, and you could potentially buy "one" shelf and have it cut into the right lenghts.. They can cut it for you when you buy it.

Thank you for all the ideas. I am tossing lots of ideas around in my head. Since the cage is already safe, I can take my time with this.

I have one chewer and one burrower (who the chewer follows under everything)! So running the fleece up the sides won't work for me because Shauna will pull the fleece down and Kerri will burrow under it! This is the primary reason that my grid walls are INSIDE the coroplast, to keep them from doing this!

Anyhow, I looked into the closet shelving when I was having trouble finding grids, and it was really expensive where I live. I am currently pricing chicken wire, but I want to buy from a store so I can make sure it is the right size holes!

Shauna is my one who is possibly pregnant. I think I have maybe felt a kick every once in a while, but she absolutely hates being picked up and held right now and she will bite anyone who tries. I took her to the vet and the vet tried to feel for babies and got bit hard! An x-ray wasn't offered, but I didn't really feel it was necessary anyhow.

I think it is probably only 1 or 2 babies as she got big quite suddenly a while back (very pear shaped) and then she started growing more herself and her belly never got huge. She is only about 5 months now herself and I have had her for exactly 66 days, so she should be at the end of her pregnancy.

But then I would have to leave the baby-proofed cage like that until any babies are large enough...at least 3-4 months I am told. Although we can only keep the girl babies, as my son refuses to have males neutered, and they are technically his pets. So if it is only boy babies, we will have to find homes for them, and they would have to be separated until we could do that, which means a separate cage altogether.

I was amazed at how quickly my babies grew. I did not spend a lot on extra stuff for baby proofing and I was so glad I did not. Within just a few weeks they were OK in the "big" cage (I kept them in a pet store cage half the day and a baby proofed cube play pen half the day). They are now four months and almost as big as my adult sows !

But, you could put a "wanted" ad on Freecycle or Craigslist for unused polital signs. Some people have a bunch stashed away. Even the flat plastic ones are usable. The sides of those cat litter jugs can work, too, if you cut them up. People dump those in the recycling all the time.

I do plan to put an add on Freecycle today. I had to join a different cities Freecycle group in order to post, as my city only gets about 1-2 posts a month! Not really active...thanks again everyone for the ideas. Keep them coming!

Do you think baby bumpers would work for a c&c cage?

Shauna&Kerri said:

I think I have maybe felt a kick every once in a while

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I never felt "lots" of movement with Strawberry's babies (it was easier to feel the babies themselves, as they were both head down and there was a head under each nipple, basically, which made it easier to trace out the rest of the bodies), however her weight gain at the end was pretty extreme... but it's really hard to say for sure how much of that was due to the pregnancy, and how much was just because she had better food available and was taking advantage of it

I was pretty sure before she delivered that she was only having two, but I had my doubts, and thought at times maybe there were 3... turns out one of the babies was just really huge!

She only had 2 babies and she was pretty big.. there wasn't much guessing if she was really pregnant right before she actually delivered. It was obvious, and she was less active (no jumping, no running) while she was pregnant, and I was able to feel her pelvis beginning to separate a few days before she had her babies.

I wonder if you could weave cardboard into the grids. I guess that doesn't look a whole lot better but if you used old soda cartons or something it could give it kind of a neat appearance. Although I don't know if that would be an approved of method? I've never baby proofed before.

Do you have a lowes, home depot, menards or farm and fleet around you?
They sell coroplast garage sale signs. Or even if you have people having garage sales you could offer to buy their sign off them when they are done and explain what it is for. They would have stuff printed on them but they would probably be more readily accessible. You just don't get as much for your money as they are pre-printed. It is still something to look into.

Another idea maybe instead of cloth would be some shower curtain clipped on the sides. It would get as messy/hard to clean.