Member Gallery: C&C cages/homemade cages

[Swissgreys]

I use c&c grids and I like how easy I can dismantle and rebuild again now and again to make the space good for them and for me as we share the room together as I work from home. My 2 boys were always in a 2x3 cage each but I decided to extend to a 2x4 cage each and stacked them. And used the left over grids to make storage.

It's great you were able to offer them more space, but as they both live alone are you considering getting them a friend?
The problem with stacked cages is that they now are unable to interact at all.

 

[Tylerspigs]

This is a homemade cage I built out of Plexiglass, 1x2 Planks, Melamine, and 1/4 inch galvanized steel mesh.
The cage is on top of 5 ikea adil legs.

I needed something that has a good lid and is sturdy enough to hold 20 pounds. I have two cats and I don’t want them to be able to fit their paw through the grids which was my second reason after the lid for not using a C&C cage. The lid is sturdy enough for my cat to jump on and sleep one and lay around so if you need a cage to hold a cat and keep the cat claws out then this might be a good solution.

It is a bit of an issue for me because I didn’t think about the fact that I am short and I am unable to reach the centre of the cage. If I had made it a little bit less than 49 inches it would be really simple to clean. The plexiglass keeps the hay and poop contained in the cage and only a little bit falls through the back. (Not pictured) I add a silicone boardering to stop hay and water from seeping down into the crack between the plexiglass and the melamine.

There are a few things I would change if I rebuilt it but it holds the guinea pigs and gives them plenty of room to run around.

I built this for my 3 piggies, but sadly one passed away soon after this was built and now there are only 2 piggies in here. This could easily fit a smaller herd with plenty of room to run around. I think it is okay for up to 7 piggies with a starting point of 7.5 sq ft for one pig and adding 2.5 ft for each additional pig.

This pic is from setup day which is why there are some tools in it and why it is empty.

 

[Deleted member 149339]

This is my piggies’ C&C cage that they are housed in from October-April.
About 2 weeks ago I adopted another guinea pig so I have expanded the enclosure by adding a 2x2 C&C section to the end of the L-shape, but you this photo was taken before the extension.
Measurements
The cage is now 2x6 (16.8 square feet) plus 2x3 (8.4 square feet) in an L-shape
Number of guinea pigs
I have 3 females and 1 neutered male but this cage has the capacity to house a total of 6 guinea pigs
Purchased
All the C&C grids were purchased from Amazon, they were advertised as storage cubes but they were great for the guinea pig cage (just make sure each grid is 9x9 little squares so the piggies don’t get their heads stuck)
Cleaning
Relatively easy to clean as the fleece can just be taken out for brushing off and washing. The base is plastic and can be easily wiped with pet-safe disinfectant. However, it can be quite difficult to reach the far corners of the cage as you have to lean right over it. Mine cage has a lid as we have a cat, this is easy to lift up and I just rest it against the wall while I clean the cage.

Overall I think my setup has plenty of space for the guinea pigs to run, but the L-shape also makes it more suitable for fitting in the house. I hope this gives any new piggie owners a bit of inspiration

Love,
Leah x (and Sula, Tillie, Lotta + Teddy Bear)

 

[Merab's Slave]

This is my piggies’ C&C cage that they are housed in from October-April.
About 2 weeks ago I adopted another guinea pig so I have expanded the enclosure by adding a 2x2 C&C section to the end of the L-shape, but you this photo was taken before the extension.
Measurements
The cage is now 2x6 (16.8 square feet) plus 2x3 (8.4 square feet) in an L-shape
Number of guinea pigs
I have 3 females and 1 neutered male but this cage has the capacity to house a total of 6 guinea pigs
Purchased
All the C&C grids were purchased from Amazon, they were advertised as storage cubes but they were great for the guinea pig cage (just make sure each grid is 9x9 little squares so the piggies don’t get their heads stuck)
Cleaning
Relatively easy to clean as the fleece can just be taken out for brushing off and washing. The base is plastic and can be easily wiped with pet-safe disinfectant. However, it can be quite difficult to reach the far corners of the cage as you have to lean right over it. Mine cage has a lid as we have a cat, this is easy to lift up and I just rest it against the wall while I clean the cage.

Overall I think my setup has plenty of space for the guinea pigs to run, but the L-shape also makes it more suitable for fitting in the house. I hope this gives any new piggie owners a bit of inspiration

Love,
Leah x (and Sula, Tillie, Lotta + Teddy Bear)

Looks good.

 

[Bill & Ted]

This is my piggies’ C&C cage that they are housed in from October-April.
About 2 weeks ago I adopted another guinea pig so I have expanded the enclosure by adding a 2x2 C&C section to the end of the L-shape, but you this photo was taken before the extension.
Measurements
The cage is now 2x6 (16.8 square feet) plus 2x3 (8.4 square feet) in an L-shape
Number of guinea pigs
I have 3 females and 1 neutered male but this cage has the capacity to house a total of 6 guinea pigs
Purchased
All the C&C grids were purchased from Amazon, they were advertised as storage cubes but they were great for the guinea pig cage (just make sure each grid is 9x9 little squares so the piggies don’t get their heads stuck)
Cleaning
Relatively easy to clean as the fleece can just be taken out for brushing off and washing. The base is plastic and can be easily wiped with pet-safe disinfectant. However, it can be quite difficult to reach the far corners of the cage as you have to lean right over it. Mine cage has a lid as we have a cat, this is easy to lift up and I just rest it against the wall while I clean the cage.

Overall I think my setup has plenty of space for the guinea pigs to run, but the L-shape also makes it more suitable for fitting in the house. I hope this gives any new piggie owners a bit of inspiration

Love,
Leah x (and Sula, Tillie, Lotta + Teddy Bear)

Looks lovely!

 

[elena]

Hello! I was finally able of building the two floor cage I talked about last month! I think it looks very nice and also it is very stable!

I just need to add some enrichment but I think that it is a good start It is a 3x4 base, 2x4 top, it is stable but I recommend adjusting it as much as u can just to make sure!

This is a good idea if you have 4 piggies, two of them together and the other two separated. I was worried it wasn't going to be stable enough, but oh boy! It is! I think it is also comfortable enough for me to clean

Also, on the bottom, make sure they are separated by just one wall, so they can talk to each other and dont feel as lonely

 

[gonebanhannahs]

This is my C&C cage for my 4 female babies. It's a 2x6 with attached 2x3 kitchen area. I need to add their toys and some more enrichment but I love it so much. The new liner just came yesterday and it's so beautiful, I can't stop looking at it.

 

[Johnny Reggae]

Here's my cage, it's a 2x4 C&C sitting on top of a folding picnic table. A 5 foot long table was the ideal length, but just a tad too narrow, so I glued a strip of plastic along one edge to extend it, the plastic padding it was delivered in was ideal for this. Everything is from eBay sellers... Table from eazy_goods, Grids from mhstarukltd, and Coro-plastic from trio_floor_protection_uk.
Future plans are to expand to 3x4 when I've got shot of some bulky furniture.

 

[fall3n-ang3l]

This is my cage, it’s a 2x nearly 6, had to shorten the 6th panel down a bit to get it to fit in that space, my husband made the base and we have put a corex sheet on the floor, using cage liners which I bought from kavee but I’ve got some material so I can make some cage liners, made a cage liner for the smaller cage they was in, made the beds as well, this is for 2 piggy wigs, also gonna make a cover over the top

 

[Meerschweinchen_Blackforest]

This is my 2 and a half storey enclosure with 6 square meters that I built out of an old wardrobe and some things that I had laying around, I only really bought the plexiglas and some screws from the diy store.

It has only been in use since Friday with my newly adopted trio of Knäckebrot, Pfannkuchen (nee Tickle) and Reiswaffel (nee Plexi).

I have already swapped the straw bedding out for soft wood shavings as it turns out I was highly allergic to it and am making plans to improve the enclosure already as I cleaned it today and found that I had to take loads of it apart with my drill.

The windows will be going into a hinged drop down frame, as at the moment I have to unscrew each individually, the ramps will be hinged so that I can tilt them up to clean underneath and the bottom fence will be hinged at all corners so that I can remove it in one piece. At the moment it is all screwed together and it was a nightmare to clean under.

There is some ambient lighting installed in the form of led Strips which is controlled via my smart home system which adjusts the daytime light levels according to the weather outside.

I will also be installing an infrared heating panel on the ceiling above the enclosure for the winter. Even with them being in my living room, we live in an old poorly insulated house and it is not uncommon for the temperatures to drop to - 25°C in winter.

The room is also air conditioned to maintain a comfortable 18°C during the day, again controlled via the smart home system.

It's painted in a non toxic water based paint (which was ridiculously expensive) but it's totally safe for them and has no offgassing to worry about.

All 3 happily use all of the ramps and the enrichment gets swapped out daily. At the moment there is a toilet roll tube filled with Pea Flakes.

 

[Wiebke]

This is my 2 and a half storey enclosure with 6 square meters that I built out of an old wardrobe and some things that I had laying around, I only really bout the plexiglas and some screws from the diy store.

It has only been in use since Friday with my newly adopted trio of Knäckebrot, Pfannkuchen (nee Tickle) and Reiswaffel (nee Plexi).

I have already swapped the straw bedding out for soft wood shavings as it turns out I was highly allergic to it and am making plans to improve the enclosure already as I cleaned it today and found that I had to take loads of it apart with my drill.

The windows will be going into a hinged drop down frame, as at the moment I have to unscrew each individually, the ramps will be hinged so that I can tilt them up to clean underneath and the bottom fence will be hinged at all corners so that I can remove it in one piece. At the moment it is all screwed together and it was a nightmare to clean under.

There is some ambient lighting installed in the form of led Strips which is controlled via my smart home system which adjusts the daytime light levels according to the weather outside.

I will also be installing an infrared heating panel on the ceiling above the enclosure for the winter. Even with them being in my living room, we live in an old poorly insulated house and it is not uncommon for the temperatures to drop to - 25°C in winter.

The room is also air conditioned to maintain a comfortable 18°C during the day, again controlled via the smart home system.

It's painted in a non toxic water based paint (which was ridiculously expensive) but it's totally safe for them and has no offgassing to worry about.

All 3 happily use all of the ramps and the enrichment gets swapped out daily. At the moment there is a toilet roll tube filled with Pea Flakes.

It looks wonderful.

Please make sure that there is plenty of hay and water on the two lower levels; including a place where your piggies can sleep and burrow in soft hay. Hay and fresh dog-pee free grass make over three quarters of the daily food intake so it is good to have it in more than one place with any group.
My current group of six mostly older sows (and their young neutered 'husboar') has got hay in three trays in different corners of their cage. Being able to sleep and burrow in hay is a major and important enrichment.
I am just making sure here and adding this advice for anybody who would like to plan something similar.

 

[Meerschweinchen_Blackforest]

It looks wonderful.

Please make sure that there is plenty of hay and water on the two lower levels; including a place where your piggies can sleep and burrow in soft hay. Hay and fresh dog-pee free grass make over three quarters of the daily food intake so it is good to have it in more than one place with any group.
My current group of six mostly older sows (and their young neutered 'husboar') has got hay in three trays in different corners of their cage. Being able to sleep and burrow in hay is a major and important enrichment.
I am just making sure here and adding this advice for anybody who would like to plan something similar.

Thanks for the advice. There are bottles and bowls of water out of sight in the photos and I've just added another "Heu-Haufen" (hay heap). There's about a kilo of hay in there at the moment.

 

[cinnamonsmom]

This is my new cage upgrade!
It’s a c&c cage, with 14x14 grids and coroplast.

The main floor is 6 x 2.5 grids. It features LED lighting for the darker corner since I lack bright windows, several washable houses, and a 1x2 grid eating tray with a fabric hay rack and carefresh bedding.

There are two upper floors. One is 2x3 grids and the other is 1x2 grids. They are linked with a “piggy walkway” which is 0.5 x4 grids. The larger upper floor has another eating area as well as some more hidey houses.

I made my own fleece bedding, just sewed custom sized pieces of fleece together with U-Haul pads (cheap washable blankets made of recycled denim) in between. Cleaning is so much easier - every 2-3 days I roll up the fleece, shake it out off my back porch, and wash.

 

[Meerschweinchen_Blackforest]

This is my new cage upgrade!
It’s a c&c cage, with 14x14 grids and coroplast.

The main floor is 6 x 2.5 grids. It features LED lighting for the darker corner since I lack bright windows, several washable houses, and a 1x2 grid eating tray with a fabric hay rack and carefresh bedding.

There are two upper floors. One is 2x3 grids and the other is 1x2 grids. They are linked with a “piggy walkway” which is 0.5 x4 grids. The larger upper floor has another eating area as well as some more hidey houses.

I made my own fleece bedding, just sewed custom sized pieces of fleece together with U-Haul pads (cheap washable blankets made of recycled denim) in between. Cleaning is so much easier - every 2-3 days I roll up the fleece, shake it out off my back porch, and wash.

That looks amazing, there's so much room for activities