Imbrium
Jennifer
I long for the days when, had someone mentioned hardware cloth, I would've asked "WTF is that?"
if I had this project to do over again, let's just say I would've built a second bin cage instead. but... I was raised not to waste perfectly good stuff, so instead I converted the "rabbit" cage my bunnies started out with (back when they were too little for a NIC cage) into a hamster cage by meshing it.
I'm not quite done - still have to figure out how to do the doors so I can get into the cage without lifting the top off of the base (for now, I just meshed them over). I also learned late last night that it was stupid of me to zip-tie the mesh to the bottom bar of the cage - I thought I was done only to find that I couldn't get it on the base
. so today, I had to snip all the zipties off the bottom and put them one bar up. luckily, I found that out before moving the hammy, wheel and bedding from his current cage into the new one.
my future probably won't be hardware cloth free, as I think my girl is preggers which means more bin cage building is in my future. I started out with a boy, who had been placed in the girls' cage at the store by accident... then after giving it some thought, I decided to take in the girl that he humped before I was able to fetch an employee to get him out of the girls' cage. she's in the bin cage and my boy gets the rabbit cage 'cause I don't want babies in the meshed one.
my original plan was to use a metal file to smooth out all the cut edges on the hardware cloth but I quickly discovered that if I wanted to actually finish the cage before my hammy died of old age, I was going to have to leave pointy edges on it. luckily for him, I was nice enough to put them all on the outside... now I just have to remember not to stab myself on them.
cage dimensions: 40.5âL x 17.25âW x 18âH... too small for bunnies, but paradise for a Syrian - it's as big as the ginormous bin cage.
original cage (pic is from the petsmart page for it):
pic of the almost-done cage from last night (empty space is where the wheel and old bedding are now)... yes, I got a bit overzealous with the zipties, lol:
if I had this project to do over again, let's just say I would've built a second bin cage instead. but... I was raised not to waste perfectly good stuff, so instead I converted the "rabbit" cage my bunnies started out with (back when they were too little for a NIC cage) into a hamster cage by meshing it.
I'm not quite done - still have to figure out how to do the doors so I can get into the cage without lifting the top off of the base (for now, I just meshed them over). I also learned late last night that it was stupid of me to zip-tie the mesh to the bottom bar of the cage - I thought I was done only to find that I couldn't get it on the base
. so today, I had to snip all the zipties off the bottom and put them one bar up. luckily, I found that out before moving the hammy, wheel and bedding from his current cage into the new one.my future probably won't be hardware cloth free, as I think my girl is preggers which means more bin cage building is in my future. I started out with a boy, who had been placed in the girls' cage at the store by accident... then after giving it some thought, I decided to take in the girl that he humped before I was able to fetch an employee to get him out of the girls' cage. she's in the bin cage and my boy gets the rabbit cage 'cause I don't want babies in the meshed one.
my original plan was to use a metal file to smooth out all the cut edges on the hardware cloth but I quickly discovered that if I wanted to actually finish the cage before my hammy died of old age, I was going to have to leave pointy edges on it. luckily for him, I was nice enough to put them all on the outside... now I just have to remember not to stab myself on them
.cage dimensions: 40.5âL x 17.25âW x 18âH... too small for bunnies, but paradise for a Syrian - it's as big as the ginormous bin cage.
original cage (pic is from the petsmart page for it):
pic of the almost-done cage from last night (empty space is where the wheel and old bedding are now)... yes, I got a bit overzealous with the zipties, lol:
