midwesternrodent
Forum Donator 2026/27
Howdy y'all,
Preamble
I recently built a new cage for my 3 guinea pigs (One six-year-old boar and two two-year-old sows). They're now in an elevated 2ft. x 6ft. (0.61 x 1.83 meters) on wheels, which is nice as we're doing a lot of work in the house and need to roll them around to different places depending on what room is being worked on. We're also saving a TON of money using fleece blankets now, before we were going through a $20 - $30 bag of compressed paper bedding every week in a similarly sized cage. In addition to other supplies, we were just burning money and generating a lot of unneeded waste since I can't compost it all. It also wasn't great for my allergies as I am allergic to my piggies and they'd kick the dust into the air, leading to them be segregated to a sealed room with an air purifier and only getting occasional visits. With the new system, we need to clean their poop every single day to keep it presentable, but my allergies have never been better and we can keep them in the living room without issue.
Cage Design (for context)
The 2x6 cage walls are your standard wire squares and are zip-tied to the pegboard around the perimeter. Inside the cage the top layer is some LVP (luxury landlord vinyl plank) that I had sitting around from the previous homeowner. This serves as a solid waterproof layer that I'm not afraid to scrub when needed, and it keeps splinters away from my guineas. Underneath the LVP is a 3/8 piece of plywood on a beefy 2x4 frame with another level underneath for storage of pig gear. My fiancee and I have stood on this thing at the same time. It won't win any beauty contests, but it's strong, fits through all our doors, and I can modify it as much as I'd like.
I have future plans to build a second identical cage and find some way to join them together to give my piggies a total of 24 square feet of space in these mobile carts. Since Vanya died though, we have had less need to do that as she was really the one who liked to sneak away and be on her own at times.
Current Cage Assembly Process.
1. Start with a clear cage, set down 3 re-usable human incontinence pads (these are the only ones I could find that are scent free around me, all puppy pads are scented and my pigs really don't like them).
2. Set a twin size mattress topper into the cage and clip it to the side with medium sized binder clips to hold it in place and reach full coverage. This provides an additional soft and absorbent layer as the surface is still quite hard with just the pads. This also helps the pads last much longer.
3. Lastly, I set a fleece blanket into the cage, smooth it out as best as I can and clip it to the sides in place with medium and small sized binder clips. I have to use a significant number of clips and get the blanket as smooth as I can here as if I don't the pigs will burrow underneath the blanket. The excess blanket is tucked underneath and it is VERY IMPORTANT that no edge of the blanket is visible. Ty Lee is very smart, she will find that blanket edge, and she will pull and pull and pull until she's pulled the blanket off the clips and can get underneath a layer of the blanket and force you to start over. We found this out the hard way.
4. Set up their hides and fleece forest, food bowls, etc....
Once this is done, we can generally spot clean poop and vacuum off excess hair from the blanket every evening and replace the fleece every week. The comforter and pads do not get saturated very quickly and can usually last 2 (or 3 if we rotate some of their hide locations so they favor different areas) weeks before we need to change them. Everything can be machine washed with scent free detergent.
My main problem is that this is very time consuming and finicky getting everything to lay flat. And the binder clips can be pretty annoying to deal with at times.
I'm slightly concerned our pigs may one day catch a foot in the binder clips, but so far that doesn't seem to be an issue. I am also trying to figure out how we could add a lid to protect them from a potential feline friend down the line, but I may settle for keeping them away from the cat in general if we ever get one.
While I like this system, I think there might be a better way to do it than using these binder clips. Does anyone have any thoughts on how I could improve this? Thanks in advance!
Preamble
I recently built a new cage for my 3 guinea pigs (One six-year-old boar and two two-year-old sows). They're now in an elevated 2ft. x 6ft. (0.61 x 1.83 meters) on wheels, which is nice as we're doing a lot of work in the house and need to roll them around to different places depending on what room is being worked on. We're also saving a TON of money using fleece blankets now, before we were going through a $20 - $30 bag of compressed paper bedding every week in a similarly sized cage. In addition to other supplies, we were just burning money and generating a lot of unneeded waste since I can't compost it all. It also wasn't great for my allergies as I am allergic to my piggies and they'd kick the dust into the air, leading to them be segregated to a sealed room with an air purifier and only getting occasional visits. With the new system, we need to clean their poop every single day to keep it presentable, but my allergies have never been better and we can keep them in the living room without issue.
Cage Design (for context)
The 2x6 cage walls are your standard wire squares and are zip-tied to the pegboard around the perimeter. Inside the cage the top layer is some LVP (
I have future plans to build a second identical cage and find some way to join them together to give my piggies a total of 24 square feet of space in these mobile carts. Since Vanya died though, we have had less need to do that as she was really the one who liked to sneak away and be on her own at times.
Current Cage Assembly Process.
1. Start with a clear cage, set down 3 re-usable human incontinence pads (these are the only ones I could find that are scent free around me, all puppy pads are scented and my pigs really don't like them).
2. Set a twin size mattress topper into the cage and clip it to the side with medium sized binder clips to hold it in place and reach full coverage. This provides an additional soft and absorbent layer as the surface is still quite hard with just the pads. This also helps the pads last much longer.
3. Lastly, I set a fleece blanket into the cage, smooth it out as best as I can and clip it to the sides in place with medium and small sized binder clips. I have to use a significant number of clips and get the blanket as smooth as I can here as if I don't the pigs will burrow underneath the blanket. The excess blanket is tucked underneath and it is VERY IMPORTANT that no edge of the blanket is visible. Ty Lee is very smart, she will find that blanket edge, and she will pull and pull and pull until she's pulled the blanket off the clips and can get underneath a layer of the blanket and force you to start over. We found this out the hard way.
4. Set up their hides and fleece forest, food bowls, etc....
Once this is done, we can generally spot clean poop and vacuum off excess hair from the blanket every evening and replace the fleece every week. The comforter and pads do not get saturated very quickly and can usually last 2 (or 3 if we rotate some of their hide locations so they favor different areas) weeks before we need to change them. Everything can be machine washed with scent free detergent.
My main problem is that this is very time consuming and finicky getting everything to lay flat. And the binder clips can be pretty annoying to deal with at times.
I'm slightly concerned our pigs may one day catch a foot in the binder clips, but so far that doesn't seem to be an issue. I am also trying to figure out how we could add a lid to protect them from a potential feline friend down the line, but I may settle for keeping them away from the cat in general if we ever get one.
While I like this system, I think there might be a better way to do it than using these binder clips. Does anyone have any thoughts on how I could improve this? Thanks in advance!
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