Switching to a pen!

[Alicia Conklin]

Well, Tucker is getting frustrated with his cage…as am I! I hate locking him in there and I hate that for him to get on his shelf he has to be in his cage and blocked by bars He cannot be free range atleast not all the time, because 1..he is destructive to carpet and 2 my big dog and him don’t get along.

So, I want to switch to a pen.  The thing is he LOVES hopping and he loves his shelf.  Any ideas on how I can combine maybe a partial cage with a pen?  Like an open cage set up?  That he can’t jump over..he’s an adventurer that’s for sure!  And I’d also love to have a partial cage so that I could somehow still put a guinea pig cage on top.  I would still love to rescue those two piggies but I want to make sure that it’s going to work out first as I don’t have another area in the house to put a big cage.  So, it either needs to work in to my tucker area or it’s gonna be a no go

I have enough space to make it about let’s see…the cage part right now is 3 cubes by 3 cubes and 2 cubes deep.  But I’d like it to be 2 cubes deep  by 4 cubes long and then the “pen” part have that be 3 more cubes out from the two and then go over the 4.  I’d like the guinea pigs to be on “level 3” so that they were at a good height for me to clean them

Another issue is that Tucker pushes his pen fence.  He pushes it til it forms like a v and then he nips at the carpet.  So I need a way to make it stay square but still be able to come apart for his out times because he does NOT like to be picked up so I usually just open his fence and let him run and then herd him back in when play time is over

Any ideas?  On any of it?  LOL I can picture what I want in my head but then actually making that is so much harder!!

ETA:  Ok this is what I am looking to do basically.. http://www.3bunnies.org/buns/oliver1/oliver_nic_closed_420.jpg

However if there is not a bottom to the pen, any ideas on how to get it to retain a squared shape?  If it is not something that is secured into that shape he moves it around until it’s away from the protected flooring and onto the carpet that he will then eat.  And if I enlarge his pen as much as I want to that means that he would have ALOT of space to move that and I can’t cover that much of the floor with the linoleum. 

 

I think I’ve got a plan for the other, I think if I reinforce the cage/shelf itself with dowels it’d be more secure and then I could put the guinea pig cage on top of that as a third level of NIC condos.  This is of course if the piggies don’t find another home and we end up taking them in, first and foremost though I’d like Tucker to have an area that is more open for him.

[Beka27]

i thought you had something like that now… a NIC condo with a pen that attaches. i’m a little confused about what is different in what you want. you want a cage he can jump in to different levels, and a pen. that sounds like a NIC condo with a pen attached. if you don’t want a condo, can you build a few shelves out of wood that he can hop onto? but that doesn’t solve the guniea pig cage location.

[Alicia Conklin]

It’s kind of what we have except that he only has a little door into his cage.  I’d like to have the condo part be more open so that he wasn’t closed off in there.   But if it’s all open will that have enough support?

So it’s not really about what to do but how to make it stabile enough really and how to make it so that he couldn’t get out of it on his own.  I’m afraid if I leave it all open the cubes themselves are going to be floppy,…like if I took the front off of it..

[Beka27]

NIC cubes rely on enough of a structure to be solid, too few and it’s not going to hold up right. i don’t really have any suggestions, maybe someone else has an idea…

can you post a pic of what you have currently, maybe that will spark an idea…

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

For the door, make a door out of NIC cubes and use hinges/zipties to make it able to open. Then buy clips from a hardware store to open and close it.

If he’s pushing on and changing the structure you can use wooden dowels to provide more support/or more zip ties. You could also place objects around it so it can’t budge. (you just put the dowels against the NIC cubes and zip tie them on)

I think it’s perfect to have a little area outside of the cage, he’ll feel like he has more freedom! You could clothespin a sheet over top so he thinks he can’t jump and doesn’t try to, or you could just make it high enough that he won’t try to jump out!

[Beka27]

Tankand RangersMom posted this link, it has a NIC condo that opens completely, but i cannot guarantee that it would be strong enough to support an additional cage on top…

http://www.longislandrabbitrescue.org/NIC-plans.pdf

K&K… could see ziptie a dowel to the outside of the pen so it can’t bend, is that what you mean?

actually this link has dowels supporting the top too…

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

Exactly ^^ we have dowels just to provide structure, even though the base flooring is NIC cubes

[kralspace]

I found my condos would stretch out of shape when I needed to scoot it over a bit, so I drilled holes (love my dremmel!) in the furring strips I had used to sturdy the levels right where they met the side grids. Then used zipties to secure it so it couldn’t stretch out.

[Alicia Conklin]

Thanks! That cage in that PDF file is exactly what I was looking for. 

 

I can see dowels keeping the sides of the pen straight but how would I keep them in a square shape..like the corners.  maybe if I put dowel diagonally through them too?  We like to keep the pen flexible for US just not for him.  So maybe if the dowels in the corner I could just take out when we needed to that would work..

[Beka27]

i was thinking of just laying a dowel on the floor horizontal and ziptying it to the bottom. he wouldn’t be able to push it out.

[MarkBun]

What I did was to make my condo 3 squares high and connect the top row together, making a door in the bottom two rows. This, along with the weight of the condo itself and the fixed top, keeps it square.

[TARM]

I like how that pen is up off the floor. Now I’m stuck between doing something like that and the thing on the PDF. Ugh, so many choices! And I need to hurry up and decide bc the bunny boys are growing like weeds!

[Alicia Conklin]

That’s where I am torn too, although if I did the one on the link I wouldn’t have it off the floor…Tucker is an only bunny right now so he gets companionship from our other animals. Him and my pug sniff each other and “chase” each other through the cage lol..they make a game of it and my big dog will sleep right up against the cage and Tucker sleeps on the other side up against her and the cats jump in there and hang out with him for a good part of the day, and when the female cat isn’t doing that she’s sleeping right up against his pen..so I really want to keep him floor level so that he gets that bonding time with them.

My biggest decision right now is if I want to have a big cage like that PDF or if I just want to do the one shelf with the longer pen like in the link.

[Moonlight_Wolf]

I am soon to have a NIC condo and a X-pen for Fern, (In the process of making a NIC condo), but that is because she cannot have run of the house becuse my mom is paranoid that she will mess up the house. So fern has two exercize pens put together to make one big pen, and that is attached to her cage. It is definately enough space for her, It almost takes up a whole room (the rest of the room is my bed and dresser, I do need that space for myself.)

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