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.