Help and Advice for Ferret Nation 182 "Chin Proofing"

[Dabunster]

So I am going to be purchasing a ferret nation 182 for my two chinchillas. I understand that there are plastic shelves and the ramps are not safe. I already planned to take out the ramps and make kiln dried white pine ramps and little shelves for them to jump on. However I do not know what to do with the shelves. I understand a lot of people just fleecewrap but I dont really want to deel with the fleece (I would rather just use the pine bedding) But the shelves aren't even really deep enough to hold it correctly. So I know you can get custom made bass ones that I could just fill up with pine bedding but I guess that is kind of my last option. Here are some examples I saw some people do that im not even really sure is safe or not

Here is still the plastic shelves but he used wood around them. Is that safe?
tinypic.com/r/demkhe/8

Is there a possible way I could make something similiar to the picture above but using a wood shelf to slide in and out?


This idea looks fine too but once again he has bass custom Tray on the bottom but what does he have on top? nothing? doesnt the pee sink into the wood?

tinypic.com/r/iptlr5/8

If you could please give me the best and maybe also the simplest ways to Chinchilla proof this cage to my liking, I can work with wood and I suppose I can buy two bass trays but it seems so expensive when I might be able to just make a wood tray myself, I just dont really know exactly how to do that, also what I should do about the ramps. SHould I makle wood ramps? or just have them hop to the second leve. All help appreciated thanks

Hunter

 

[Godofgods]

Thats my girls cage. Im just using that pic for reference.

You don't rly want 'ramps' of any kind in there for a healthy chin. They love hoping around from one thing to another. So its better to use little ledges. I made wooden ones that you can see in there. Good to get around, good to chew. Mine are around 5-6 square inches or something like that. Each has two double sides screws in them. One side screws into the wood. The other side can hold a wing nut. (Wing nuts are much easier to deal with then a regular nut.) They are attached to the cage with those and two 1.5 inch washers for each screw. (With the bars being 1 inch spacing, a one inch washer just barley touches the bars. Making it a pretty weak hold imo. So i go with 1.5 inch). And i use two screws in each ledge because having only one in the center creates a focal point. the wood can lean/tilt to one side. Some times heavily to a side. Having two (one on each end) help give it much more strength and it can lean like that.

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A wooden bottom might not be the best way to go. Trays are usually where chins will urinate on. You don't want that soaking into the wood for many obvious reasons. - And the plastic trays are a problem if the chins start chewing on it. Also a wooden tray might be hard to remove from the cage to clean.

Some ppl wrap the plastic trays in fleece. You can see i went with the metal bass pans. They are pretty good, and cant rly be chewed. Also the higher lips help keep some of the mess in the cage instead of on the floor.

The only two downsides are the cost and the noise. They can cost a fair penny. But the upside of that is they should last the life of the pet or longer. The noise can be an issue tho. You have a metal tary on top of metal bars. When they jump around it can cause a clanging sound. So i put a single sheet of fleece under the tray. (Between the bars and the tray.) That reduced the noise drastically. If you want bass pans, i would recommend a sheet of fleece for each.

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The half shelves i have never had a problem with. I don't even recall hearing about any problems with them. But i think the newer cages being released today have these half trays with a mini lip surrounding them. So that could make a difference maybe. (The half trays i have are flat with no lip.)

 

[Amethyst]

As said you don't need ramps for chins, they are rock hoppers in the wild so they don't need ramps. I agree that the wood tray would probably be a bad idea, it would soak up the pee and get gross quickly. The first link with the wood border could work, so long as your chin doesn't chew the plastic or it's tight enough that the chin can't get to the plastic tray.
Another option is to make a wooden tray and tile it, that way you could have sides high enough to hold bedding and the wood under wouldn't soak up anything since it's covered in tile. Or just tile the metal bar "floor" if you do a search on the forum here for "tiling" others have done that and it looks very nice.