Long time no post! AKA Annie's cage tour June 2013

So I am back from my holiday, all nice and relaxed, so I decided to do an overhaul of Annie's cage layout!

 This is Annie's cage, which is a zoozone 2 aka the zoozone large, which has dimensions of 100 by 50 centimetres. As you can see, the bar spacing on the top is quite large, and needs to be meshed to prevent escapes. I used 6 millimetre square mesh because it is impossible for Annie to chew it, but mesh with larger spacing such as 13 millimetre square mesh is also fine if you don't have to worry about your hamsters trying to chew anything metal or bar like!

On the left she has her coconut (currently containing nesting material), her hamster sized sputnik, her climbing frame with a piece of slate on top and a chewed up toilet roll tube underneath, a wooden log tunnel with a flavoured wood chew underneath it, a ping pong ball egg thing, and parts of her old daisy chain chew scattered around on the floor. I've filled this half with tonnes of substrate to try and encourage her to start digging again -- she did it all the time in her old barred cage but now she can't fling substrate all over the floor outside the cage she seems to have lost interest!

In the middle she has her sand bath/toilet jar and her "guinea pig" sized corner house, with a bendy bridge so she can climb onto the roof from the shallow substrate half of the cage. It's also the table for her water bowl (she can't have a bottle due to her metal chewing habit). At the bottom of the picture you can just about see her kitchen roll tube which I have torn into one long spiral so she doesn't get trapped in it -- the diameter of a kitchen roll tube, and a toilet roll tube for that matter, is perfect for dwarfs but too small for Syrians to get through comfortably or with full cheek pouches.

On the right she has her 11 inch wooden wheel, her see-saw, a grass nest and a hedgehog shaped antos dog chew that appears to be lying on its face! You can't see it in this picture, but there's also a carrot shaped chew meant for rabbits that's blocking the water bottle hole so she can't chew the plastic there, which is in the picture below. Also in the picture below, you can see her Ferplast rat tube, which spans across the cage, and the other part of her daisy chain chew which is hanging from the bars by a cable tie.

 

And that's it! It's a fairly big layout change for Annie, but she seems to be enjoying it so far!

Darla cage tour May 2013

I mentioned doing a cage tour of Darla's cage a while back now... so here it is!

Here it is. It is still the 62 litre Crystal storage box from Wilkinson's, external dimensions 79.5 by 39.5 cm, 25cm tall. On the left he has his little house which he stores his food in, a bendy bridge up to the roof, and his sand bath with a wicker teepee over it.

 In the middle he has his wooden swing thing and a tube leading under his platform. You can also see his T-shaped alfalfa tube.

Then we have his platform, made by the lovely woman who also let me adopt Winter and Rocco! It's made from an Ikea magazine rack, and there's a detailed thread about her making them over here on one of the hamster forums I go on. On the platform he has his flying saucer, a hedgehog shaped antos dog chew and a strawberry wooden chew. His T-shaped alfalfa log leads to his water bottle, and as you can see he likes sitting half in the log to drink.

He also nests under the platform.

And a bonus Darla pic!

Cage Tours (March 2013)

So, since the hamster cages are lovely and clean, what better time than to give a little cage tour!

First up is Darla. He's currently in a bin cage made from the 62 litre Crystal storage box (I got mine from Wilkinson's). External dimensions are 79.5 by 39.5 cm, and it's 25cm tall. On the left he has a 6.5" flying saucer supported underneath by a DIY cardboard table, a sand bath, a T-shaped alfalfa tunnel, and two wooden tunnels (one leading down underneath the flying saucer to where he makes his nest) and a yellow strawberry chew toy.

On the right side he has a swing thing, a willow bendy bridge, a willow teepee filled with kitchen roll, his water bottle and house with his food bowl inside.

 Next is Annie. She's in a Ferplast Mary "rat" cage from the big green pet store, with dimensions of 82 by 52cm, and a height of 37cm. The left side has an 11" wooden wheel from zooplus.co.uk, her burrowing box, a wooden bridge with a piece of slate on top to help keep her nails down, and her food bowl.

The right side has an old shoe box that she uses as a house, with the roof off her old house on top to disguise it, and two arches cut out of the sides with a bendy willow bridge and another wooden tunnel thing as doorways. She also has a wooden see-saw and a Tesco value jar as a sand bath/toilet.

Suspended from the bars, she has a rat tube leading from the house roof to the digging box, a daisy chain chew toy, a small sputnik, a cargo net hammock, and a wooden hanging bridge. (Her water bottle is also fastened on to the front of the cage.) 

Hope you enjoyed the tour!