Cage Preparations & Log Staircases

I'm still waiting for my melamine faced boards to be delivered to my local B&Q so this weekend I've been busy preparing everything I can so once the wood arrives I can just piece everything together. It's amazing how time consuming some bits of the build can be that you just wouldn't expect could take so long. I cut down all the wire mesh for my vent holes and the strips of builders band that will hold it in place and protect the edges. I had to buy some tin shears to do this as the builders band is very tough which hopefully means my girls won't be able to eat their way through it. I sawed my kiln dried pine to the correct lengths for the pop holes and covered them with the angle beading for chew protection.


I also cut down all my PVC corner strips that I will be covering the outside of the vents with. I'm hoping this will look OK, I settled for PVC strips because for aluminium strips it was easily double the price and where my cage is going to be positioned the sides are barely going to be visible. Finally I cut down my aluminium support tubes to the correct lengths - I had to use a mitre saw for this.


In my previous cage I used kiln dried pine as ramps throughout so my girls could climb the levels but they loved to just gnaw through them and very quickly they just started to look shabby. I thought for this cage I would try and make the interiors look more natural and I'm going to try and make all the toys and accessories myself out of natural products. I had an idea of making mini spiral staircases out of logs and asked a local firewood dealer if he could supply some logs approximately 300mm long with diameters between 50mm-100mm. He did a great job and supplied me with some great Ash and Oak tree logs, if you are unsure of which would is safe here is the list I use to check - Safe Woods List
I then just cut them into 4x lengths of 250mm, 200mm, 150mm & 100mm so they would fit under my levels. My dad very kindly bought me a mitre saw as a -very- early Christmas present today and I am so happy with it, I keep trying to find more things to saw now!


I cut some of the old ramps from my current cage in half and used them as bases for the logs to sit on.


Lastly I drilled through from the underside and secured the logs in place with screws. So here we have it, four degu staircases!



I'm really pleased with how they have turned out and hopefully they'll look great in the cage.

The New Cage Design

I have had my current cage for just over a year now and it has served me well but the sawdust falling out is a problem and it's just starting to look a bit worn. I decided I was going to build a new cage with better ceiling heights for the girls and the glass doors raised off the ground so as to hopefully reduce the amount of sawdust that falls out when the doors are opened.

As mentioned in my previous post I have 4 girls that are currently separated into two pairs of sisters. One pair who are 1 year and 8 months old and another pair who are 11 months old. I decided to make two cages that can stack on top of each other so if/when we need to move the cage it should be a lot easier than moving a giant cage - like we have at the moment.

I decided the floor measurements of 120cm by 60cm for each cage with a base and 2 levels. My current cage has a depth of 50cm and I think 60cm will be better. This gives each group a CARA of 21,600cm2. (recommended minimum for 2 is 18,000cm2).

Here is the design for each cage - drawn using Sketchup.

I will be using conti melamine faced board as the main material for the cage as this is basically waterproof which I am hoping will be much easier to clean.

The heights of the levels are:
Bottom - 30cm
Middle - 30cm
Top - 40cm to accommodate the 35cm diameter wheel

I would have liked the top level to be 50cm high ideally but overall the cage would have been too tall for me to actually see into or clean.

Each level has a 30cm by 10cm vent on either side which will be covered with wire mesh and held in place using builders band. On the front of each level is 10cm high edge, on top of which will sit the sliding acrylic doors. In the middle of the level at the front there is an aluminium tube which will prevent the level above sagging in the middle and stop any pressure being applied to the acrylic sheets.

How the whole cage will look - yes it's pretty intimidating!

 I have put together a materials list which I have detailed below so I could keep a track of the exact cost of making this giant.

Shop	Material	Price	Quantity	Total
B&Q	Melamine board 2440 x 1220	£30.00	4	£120.00
B&Q	Softwood Rough Sawn Timber (T)22mm (W)50mm (L)1800mm	£1.98	1	£1.98
B&Q	Diall Gloss Melamine Edging Tape (W)18mm (L)5000mm (T)0.03mm	£7.00	2	£14.00
Cake Craft Shop	Cake tin 14"'x4"	£22.03	2	£44.05
Cutplasticsheeting	Clear Perspex 620x190x4mm	£3.24	8	£25.92
Cutplasticsheeting	Clear Perspex 620x290x4mm	£4.95	4	£19.80
Ebay	120cm FULL LENGTH VIVARIUM PVC 4mm GLASS RUNNERS track for 4ft wide vivs WHITE	£9.95	6	£59.70
Wickes	Wickes 6mm Galvanised Mesh Panel 600mmx900mm	3.59	2	£7.18
B&Q	White PVC Corner (H)15mm (W)15mm (L)2m	£2.98	6	£17.88
Ebay	ALUMINIUM ROUND TUBE 30mm OD x 300mm LONG 2mm WALL	£2.63	4	£10.52
Ebay	ALUMINIUM ROUND TUBE 30mm OD x 900mm LONG 2mm WALL	£7.02	1	£7.02
Wickes	Wickes Multi Purpose Builders Fixing Band 20mmx10m	£9.92	2	£19.84
B&Q	Loctite Hot Melt Glue Sticks	£4.91	1	£4.91
Seapets	Silicone	£10.25	1	£10.25
B&Q	200 Wood Screws 40mm	£6.08	1	£6.08
B&Q	Screw Cap (Dia)4mm, Pack of 20	£1.00	2	£2.00
Total
£371.13

I admit that this not a cheap project but hopefully by building this cage in the most degu-proof way possible it will last for years and it will be worth the initial expense. I have ordered all the materials now but I have to wait until next weekend for the wood to arrive so I can start the build. 

DIY Exercise Wheels & Saucers

These saucers are now available for purchase here: 38cm Silent Flying Saucer

Here is a quick guide to show how I have made my flying saucers and running wheels.

The degus international community forum states: The minimum diameter is 33cm/13" for wheels and 42cm/16.5" for saucers. At the time I made my saucers their minimum recommended diameter was 38cm so that is the size I used.

I had been struggling to find a good flying saucer for my girls for ages and I had seen videos of saucers made from the Ikea snudda lazy susan but firstly, it seems it is always out of stock in the UK and secondly it sounded really loud.

For the main plate I used a large wooden chopping board.

I used a roller blade wheel for the bearing and attached it using nuts and bolts.

 Firstly I had to saw off the handle, I used a coping saw for this so as to get a nice rounded cut.

I then found the centre of the circle using This Technique and drilled a hole for my bolt to go through.

I then made the base for the saucer sit on using some kiln dried pine I had left over from the build. (One of the pieces is a bit chewed already as I used it for the base of my previous saucer)

I then cut a hole out of the piece of wood using a hole saw bit on my drill for the roller blade wheel to sit in. I chose to do this so my wheel would sit into the wood and my girls wouldn't be able to get to it and chew at the rubber. You don't have to do this step you can protect the wheel with some builders band or something similar instead.

I put a longer bolt through the centre of the plate and then sat the wheel on top with 3 bolts ready to fix to the base.

 Then I used a computer vent cover to screw into the base so that I could attached the bolts to it and used more nuts to hold it all in place. These kind of vents can be bought from eBay in packs of 3 for 99p.

Finally the last step was to roughen the surface of the saucer with some sandpaper for grip.

I have also just made some new wheels using the exact same method but made from large 35cm diameter aluminium cake tins purchased from this site: Cake Craft Shop
They are going to go into the new cage and so I haven't had a chance to test them out yet - as soon as I do I will post an update but I am hoping they work well. I've used extra long bolts here as they are going to attach directly to the back of the cage.


I have been using the saucers for 3 months now and I absolutely love them, they spin completely silently and the girls love them too.

Meet the girls, previous cages & problems

My name is Louise, I'm from the UK and I am writing this blog to show people my cage building experience so that I can hopefully help others to build their own cages and provide some inspiration. Degus require a lot of running space and therefore a large enclosure is a necessity. I hope to show that a large cage build can be completed by someone who really has no proper DIY skills but has the willingness to provide a good home for their degus. Unfortunately I, like a lot of new degu owners, was given poor advice on how to house these wonderful little animals by the pet shop (for me it was pets at home) and as a result bought a cage that was far too small to start with.

I bought my first two degus Millie & Peach in April 2013, I'll admit I should have done more research before buying them and I knew little about their housing needs.

Here is one of the first photos I ever took of them.

The first cage I ever used was a 3 tier wire ferret cage which I added wooden levels to so as not to hurt their feet.

I did a lot of research online and realised the cage was far too small and set about designing a larger cage.

A great website with loads of degu information is: Degus International Community
This forum is full of knowledgeable, experienced degu owners who are willing to offer advice and help to everyone, degu welfare is their top priority.

My first cage build turned out like this.

This cage was made from large plywood boards that I bought from B&Q and everything accessible in the cage made from kiln dried pine. Total CARA (cumulative available running area) was 15,600cm2
 View CARA chart

One evening in January 2014 I went to pets at home to buy some more sawdust and ended up buying two more little degu girls, Morpheus and Sky. I quickly extended the cage by adding a top section and extending all the levels to be full width levels. Total CARA is 36,600cm2.

Left to Right - Morpheus, Peach, Sky & Millie

For a few months the four girls lived happily as a group but once Morpheus and Sky hit puberty things started to go downhill. They started fighting very badly, ripping out tufts of fur and drawing blood from each other so we separated the pairs giving them both 3 levels in the cage with a wire mesh vertical divider in the middle so they could still see each other. We tried for ages to get them back together and although introductions went well outside the cage as soon as they got back into the cage (even with a mesh divider) they became aggressive and it caused the two pairs to start fighting amongst themselves too. We have now decided that -at least for the next year or so- we are going to keep them in pairs to reduce the stress amongst them.

Problems 

I wanted to post a few photos of some of the problems I have had along the way with the old cages so anyone planning their own cage can be aware of these issues before they build there own.

Degus will chew everything

Don't use plastic bottles inside the cage as they will chew them and not only is it dangerous for their health, once a hole has been made there will be no vacuum and the water will spill out all over the cage soaking the bedding.


I also used little wooden water bottle holders which I just slotted the water bottles into, as you can see these were also chewed.

At first I used kiln dried pine strips of wood along the front of every level to stop the sawdust falling off the ledges but soon discovered that they will just chew on these until they are none existent. However a good, cheap product I found to prevent this problem is Galvanised Steel Angle Bead you can just lay this along the tops of all exposed edges to protect them from being destroyed.


As you can see from the photos a major problem I faced was wood shavings being caught between my sliding acrylic doors and the wood I had placed behind to try and stop the shavings falling out. This has caused so much annoyance and so much hoovering in my house because not only does it fall in front of the cage it is very easily stepped in and then it just ends up absolutely everywhere.

On one level I tried to remove the back piece of wood which measured 10cm high and just put a metal lip behind the acrylic to try to stop them chewing the plastic runners but the doors were only sitting on a piece of wood that was 5cm high - this is not enough. After extending my levels the problem got much worse because it was getting trapped between the levels and the doors.


Sliding doors
I absolutely love having sliding doors in the enclosure it looks so professional and you can easily see your degus and they are great when it comes to cleaning because you can just lift them out. A problem I found with them however is that in my enclosure the levels were 120cm long and made of heavy plywood which has drooped in the center over time. Because of this it is now resting on the doors which makes it incredibly hard to open a few of them and lifting them out now for cleaning is a nightmare. For anyone using sliding doors I would recommend using some sort of support in the center of the levels.

I find a lot of sites online only show photos of brand new cages that have not yet been lived in so it's hard to foresee any problems, hopefully these photos will help you not make the same mistakes I did!