Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Ivar cages for your degus

When I first saw this, I thought they were hamsters but I learnt some thing new today. It's a degu, a small caviomorph rodent that is native to Chile. And they are getting very popular as pets. So if you have degu and are looking for a cage, this may fit the bill.


Antonia found a way to convert her Ivar racks into a home for four degus.


She says, "On the top there is enough space to decorate it with some flowers etc. Under the cage you find a drawer where you can store everything you need for your pets. Also, the Forvar jar from Ikea is a wonderful sand bath and helps to keep the environment clean.


Thanks to my boyfriend Sven, these racks are a wonderful adventure playground for the four clowns."
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11 comments:

  2. IVAR's generally great to build cages with, but Degus should be kept in un-gnaw-able cages.
    See pic #3 for the already "opened" doors of the 4th floor.

    :-/

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  4. I like IKEA for the meatballs. De-lish-us.

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  5. That is so great! It is really compact, but gives your babies a lot of space and variety.

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  7. Speaking as someone who's owned a pair of 'goos for the past four years, all-wire cages are really the only way to go. They will chew through anything.

    I'd really, really advise against this hacked design. I don't want to see any animals hurt by someone thinking they're being clever.

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  8. It's not totally impossible, using an IVAR wooden unit. I made a 6' high gerbil cage with 3 separate compartments, adding hinged doors to the side, but made sure (although this may depend on how the bookcase is constructed) to keep the wiring to the INSIDE of the corner struts. This pretty well prevented my gerbs chewing them or in fact having little effect over the years. Then I had a specialist make steel trays to slide in and out of each compartment. Makes it so much easier to clean The same would work well with the degus.

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  9. I'm intrigued - can anyone tell what the door frames are hacked from? It seems to me that this fundamental design has possible uses far beyond that of "animal cage" ... specifically, use hardboard or something similar inside the door frames and you'd have a very spiffy cabinet, I think.

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  11. What everyone says about building wooden cages is not completely true. Degus can't chew on flat surfaces, as long as you protect edges with metal plates nothing it's perfectly safe.

    I bought IVAR last weekend to build my new degu cage, but I see someone else came up with the idea first hahaha. Nice job!

    ReplyDelete

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