Wanting to turn Dog crate into guinea house!

[warnisha]

Hello!!!!

I am a new member and new mom to 2 girls I adopted just a few weeks ago from a coworker. My son has been begging for guinea pigs for months since he fell in love with my friends girls. I didn't want to do a pet shop buy as we have always rescued our animals (except the dogs), including driving hours to a reptile rescue for bearded dragons hahahaha!


Anyway, the girls came with a nice cage, and its a good size (not sure if its big enough...) and its what they are used to. I am going to take a smaller cage and attach them together end to end so they have more room for now. I have changed from paper bedding to hospital bed pads (washable) on puppy pads (that they cant get to)....will be making them fleece lining I believe in the summer when i'm off.

We have a HUGE dog crate that just sits in the garage. I have bought screen and clear flexible plastic and didn't need it as they have plenty of hiding areas and the cats cant get to them.

How on earth do I even begin with converting this dog crate for them.....Its almost 4ft long, and 30 inches tall....has two doors, and I think would be much better for them but I am just stumped. Anyone have pics? Would it be too much for them?

[bpatters]

Welcome!

You're right, that cage is definitely too small. It's too small for one pig, much less two. The dog crate would probably be better, depending on how wide it is. Two pigs need at least eight square feet of space, and more is better.

I've used a dog crate for a travel cage and a quarantine cage. I just bought a box of grids and zip-tied them around the bottom, overlapping them so that the holes were too small for the pigs' heads to fit through.

[ItsaZoo]

Is the dog crate a collapsible cage with a plastic pull-out tray on the bottom? If so, it sounds like the cage I have for our dog. It would be a good size, but I would recommend adding grids or solid acrylic around the inside bottom of the cage. There are gaps at the bottom that guinea pigs could get their heads caught or catch a leg on when they run. Our dog actually got his back leg caught once when he jumped in and his leg slipped through the grid.

[warnisha]

Yes it is the collapsible kind, I plan to either do the coraplast or something similar....I do have screen and clear plastic I can use....will just need to experiment and see what works best.