Ferret Nation Questions

[choob99]

Hi all new to the forum, I have been out of the hobby for several years, however I used to keep FN's when I had chins years ago. Although they were stock FN's with the plastic shelves in them, I used to just cover the ladders with fleece.

Anyway, I have a few questions.....first up is where do you get the deep metal pans for the bottoms of them?
Where do you get the wood ledges from?
Where do you get the larger wooden shelves from?
How do you use to secure your fleece down so that it doesn't bunch up or flip over?

Thats all the questions for now lol hopefully the responses are quick as I would like to start setting up some cages this week.

 

[Chinmama]

You can find the deep metal pans at Bass Equipment: http://www.bassequipment.com/Cage+Pans/Ferret+Pans/default.aspx.

There are several sellers in the classifieds and/or banner ads who sell the wooden ledges and fleece liners. Shelly at Fleece for Furries sells both.

 

[chinchillachris]

You can either build the shelves and ledges yourself (there is one thread with instructions on how to do it), or you can purchase them from certain chinchilla breeders/rescues who have online e-stores (try Whimsy's Menagerie, I know they sell some ledges and shelves). As for the pans, just like chinmama said, you can buy them online from Bass. BUT, Bass also sells metal pans for the two smaller half size levels in the FN, however, they're not listed on the website yet. If you want the two smaller metal pans, you have to call up Bass yourself and order them over the phone. (When I ordered them, they were approx. $16 each.) Finally, as for your question about the fleece, what you should do is cut your fleece about 1-2 feet longer than the actual pan length and tuck the extra 1-2 feet of fleece under the bottom of the pan. I hope I helped! Good luck :thumbsup:

 

[akane]

You can just pull the ramps rather than cover them. Chins don't need them and some have said they have a higher chance of chins messing up their running and jumps on them causing leg injuries. I was just talking with someone on the international forum who's chin took a face dive off the top of a ramp because he was going too fast and is limping now.

Most of our fleece doesn't need fastened or weighed down at all. They don't do more than flip one corner occasionally. Every now and then though for reasons unknown someone decides to pull all the fleece in to the house. I just set plain bricks on the back corners until they give it up. We have also tried binder clips but they were annoying and sometimes the chins were still strong enough to pull the fleece loose.

Building plain pine board shelves is easy. You just need to twist some hanger bolts in the back and put appropriate sized washers and wing nuts on the end. Drilling a hole first can help but pine board is pretty soft. We used a special kind of nut and electric drill to put hanger bolts in hickory wood and wore through the nut on one piece without getting the hanger bolt all the way in. I have to pad it with lots of washers to sit tight against the cage bars. Problem with using hardwoods. If you want something other than plain pine board it is worth buying them from the classifieds section.

 

[fbodgrl]

I don't have bass pans. I still have the plastic pan on the bottom. I removed the center one. I made my fleece liners long enough to tuck under the plastic pan.

I made my own ledges and shelves (except the lava ledge... lol). I got kiln dried pine at home depot. They cut it into the sizes I wanted. They also sell the hanger bolts, washers and nuts to hang them. Make sure you get kiln dried pine. No treated wood. Poplar is safe too, but more pricey.

If you haven't go through the FN thread for inspiration