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Welcome to My

Here you will find some general information on my cage, the design choices I made and why!  I hope you enjoy this page and get some ideas for your own chinnie custom cage!

E-mail me with any questions or comments!

When I purchased my first two Chinchillas I had purchased a Prevue 3 story cage for my little ones.  As time went on they outgrew this cage so I purchased a second cage and connected the two.  I quickly learned that while this cage was easy to find and seemed like a good idea...it wasn't!  My chins could spray urine through the cage and their "pellets" got all over my room.  Not to mention the overall clean up of the cage was hard!  Before I decided to purchase my third chinchilla, I had decided that I wanted to build a custom solid cage for my growing chinnie family.

I started my research for cage design ideas at

ChinNet's Cage Design Page

ChinBin's Chin Cage

This site led me to

where I got alot of my ideas!

With my research in hand I headed off to design my cage and came up with the following:

WELL HERE IT IS!!! I decided to build my cage mainly out of Melamine Coated Presboard for its durability, resistance to chewing and most importantly...easy clean up!! Because I had the wire readily available from the previous cages I decided to cannibalize one cage and use its wire for the front doors.  The smaller door openings allow me to access the cage without having to open up the large doors.  The bin feeder I added also helped in feeding my chins and making sure they didn't run out of food while I wasn't around.  Unlike my wire cage I could find the spots where the chins liked to urinate.  Once I figured out there favorite spot I bought a corner bin (left of the feeder) and velcro'ed it into the cage.  This gave the chins a litter box...and made clean up even easier!

One design challange that I faced using my building material of choice was how to protect the edges of the shelves from being chewed to pieces?  I came up with a simple and fairly cost effective approach.  I purchased some 8' long sections of 3/4" aluminum angle bracket.  By simply cutting the pieces to length and screwing them to the edges of each shelf the chins couldn't gnaw at the wood.  Plus it looks alot neater than using the typical melamine edging.

One of the few benefits of a wire cage is the bottom shelf allowing any "mess" to pass through to a liter pan.  In order to make a wire bottom in my new cage I had to:

1. Find a wire mesh that was good to look at and easy clean up...I purchased a sheet of 1/2 x 1/2 stainless steel wire mesh from:

Argus Steel

2. Find a liter pan for the bottom of the cage.  I couldn't find anyone locally that could beat the price of:

DaMar's Chin Cage Equipment

The rest is of the cage is pretty basic.  A simple nesting box for sleeping made out of non-treated pine.  I happen to have two (one from the old cage).  I use the larger one to house hay...it keeps it from going everywhere and they won't get hurt on a wire hanger.  I used some of the wire ramps from the old cage in the new cage too.  You can also see the perches that I bought from a local pet shop.  These simply screw onto the wire doors.  The chins like to sit on them and chew on the wood.  I also used some branches from an apple tree in my cage.  Like the perches these serve as a something to chew on.  It also acts as a ramp so the chins can climb up from the bottom.  Note: Keep in mind not to make your shelves too high...ofcourse a grown chin can jump over 12 inches!

Here is some detail of the door and the wire from the old cage.  The doors are simple...I used 1" aluminum strips to hold the wire to the door frames.  I also used the same 3/4" aluminum angle brackets around the entire door frame.  I spent too long making these doors to have them chewed.  To make a strong door I used wood biscuits to hold the door frame together.  These biscuits expand with glue and make for a very strong joint.

Ofcourse you must remember to purchase a Chin Exercise wheel that is large enough and safe enough for you chins to run around in.  I would suggest a solid running track...but that's my preference.  My first wheel served the purpose...but with my wire bottom cage this wheel didn't work well over time.   I found it was hard to clean and made alot of noise over time.  The mess was the urine sticking to the metal and it was loud as it was mounted to the cage wire which flexes.  However, in a solid cage it would have probably have worked out.  Below is the info on this wheel:

Purchase from Chinchillas as Pets

For the new cage I wanted to purchase a new wheel.  I found this wheel that is solid aluminum and powder coated.  It's extremely well built and worth every penny I paid for it.  The chins love it!! Below is the info on this wheel:

15" Leo Braun Chin Wheel

Here is Bizkit going for a run as he usually does!

Meet My Chins...JUST UPDATED!!!

Check out my other Chin Pages:

Chin Links...JUST ADDED!!!