Behavior Darwin... the escape artist!

[FuryanGoddess]

Our cage is made w/ the wire shelving units for closets and while it is fine for Gumball and Mr. Dad, Darwin, our smallest piggie, has mastered The Great Escape.

My daughter has repeatedly found him under her bed. I thought I had fixed the issue, until last night, when he got out again, twice, once she went to bed.

He seems kinda long, and since we got him as a baby, uses his length to crawl out of things... so, he goes up to the side, grabs hold w/ his teeth, and uses the middle bar support and pushes himself up and over the side of the cage... FREEEEDOOMMMMM!!!

I bet her bed has some poopies under it... lol

Aside from him possibly getting hurt or lost, we have a German Shepherd who is very well behaved, but is, at the end of the day, a dog that has a small prey drive. *sigh*

No wonder we always keep her room door shut. So, mods have been made and no more freedom... I hope!

 

[RubyRain]

Looks like it's time for a cage lid! I assume that is what you've done?
Hope you have no more surprises!

 

[bpatters]

My cage is also made of shelving, and I use two lengths of shelving for the lids. I clamp the lid down with the kind of latch that's on the end of a dog leash.

 

[FuryanGoddess]

yeah, I liked the open cage but.... looks like that's not an option for now. There is a Sears up the street.. I'm gonna stop in there and see if they have those cubes on sale. They said there are some online, but we know how reliable that info is...

 

[RubyRain]

The shelf lengths are easier to use as lids than the cubes-just FYI. The stores will often cut them to the length that you want too the premade length isn't what you need.

 

[FuryanGoddess]

yeah... I'm just wondering if we dont' need a better overall design...

 

[Kieri]

aww! one of my pigs, obcy, was a little escape artist a few weeks ago. i made my pigs a new cage. unfortunately, the pack of grids i bought had both large holed grids and small holed grids. i overlapped the large holed grids (i ran out of the small ones), but obcy figured out how to push the overlapped grids out of the way and she squeezed her way out.

my boyfriend looked up and saw a blur of guinea pig dash across my room and under my bed.

if you happen to overlap grids/shelving to keep him from squeezing out, make sure you use a bunch of zipties to strengthen the grids! piggies are persistent, at least obcy definitely was!

 

[FuryanGoddess]

Yeah, the ones at Target have the bigger and smaller ones. The ones at Sears have only the smaller ones. My husband will kill me if I redo the cage again. he already thinks I'm crazy and that he was stupid for being talked into three piggies.