clutterydrawer
Wise Old Thumper
I took on two chins last summer from a friend who could no longer care for them. I was told they came with a cage – “Hooray!” thought I.
Turned out to be this:
I really wanted them to have more space, so started looking for a new cage. There are some nice ones available but for the size I wanted, they were all way out of my price range.
So, given that I’m terrible at maths, have no woodworking experience and am notorious for not planning things through properly – I thought, why not build one myself? What follows is a lot of pictures of it in progress – skip to the bottom if you just want to see the finished cage!)
First – plan it all out carefully – not doing this has been my downfall in the past. As you can see I had to make a lot of modifications after the initial draft! I’ve designed it as big as possible within the space I had spare in my living room. It’s got big doors to get in for cleaning, and is divided into two halves with a ladder leading from one to the other. That way I can block them into the bottom half whiel I clean the top, and vice versa; and if I needed to I could separate the chins, eg if I wanted to monitor how well one was eating.
Crucially, make sure it’s small enough to fit through your doors. In my zeal to give the chins as much space as possible, I first made it too wide, and had to disassemble the side panels and take a bit off. It’s important that it goes through a door as I move it to a cooler room in summer.
The cost of wood and mesh was about £120, I spent a bit on brackets and screws, but already had hinges, bolts and doorhandles in stock. So quite a cheap cage for the size - it's about 140 x 120 x 80.
Then – cut the wood to size and assemble the panels. Here is my “workshop” – yes, it’s a kitchen, and not a particularly big one. I think the biggest hindrance to this project was the lack of space, it made things really awkward.
I don’t have a workbench either – but these bricks worked pretty well!
A tip for those thinking of doing something like this – you can’t just put in a screw at each corner, the panels won’t be strong enough, and will flex when you pick them up. I didn’t realise this and had to make an extra trip to town to buy lots of corner brackets.
Covering them with weldmesh – 16g with ¾” holes as recommended by people on the chin forum. This was painful and time consuming. I ripped my hand open on a sharp edge of mesh and sprayed blood everywhere, which was fortunate because I realised how dangerous it could be for the chins, so I borrowed a file from work and ground all the edges smooth.
Then I needed to screw them all together, which is when I realised I don’t have twelve hands. I didn’t want to pay out for clamps, cos I’ll probably never use them again, so I went round the village begging to borrow them from people. Got quite a few! Another tip – ideally you should clamp it all together *before* you put the mesh on – that way you can check that everything fits together as it should, and it’s easier to make any changes. Then you can take it apart, mesh it, and clamp it back together again. I didn’t think of this till halfway through but luckily it wwas all ok.
Here is the half shelf in the bottom, and the supports for the main shelf in the middle.
These are the only screwed down bits of the middle shelf, the other pieces slot in tightly but lift out for easy cleaning.
I'm not 100% pleased with the shelves. They're made of planks rather than one solid piece, because I got given the wood free. It means there are little cracks where dirt will get trapped, but it also means it's easier to take them in and out for cleaning as they're lighter. I might redo them in future, or I might not.
It would have helped if I’d built it where it was intended to go. But I managed to drag it there anyway. Perfect fit!
And here it is! The top storey isn’t finished yet – there will be more shelves, hammocks etc, as most of it’s just wasted space at the moment. But it’s taken me just over a week to do this and I was losing the will to live! So it will be finished off when I have a bit of spare time. I can’t believe I thought it’d only take me three days *sigh*
It's just stood on a bit of plywood for now, I'm going to try to get a metal tray made for the bottom though. The tiny door on the bottom of the right side is for ease of exercising, I'm going to construct a passage from there to their play area so they can go in and out as they please.
Downstairs:
Upstairs:
They seem to really love it
I put them in late last night and then stayed up for nearly three hours just watching them race around exploring everything.
So to sum up: my hands are ripped to shreds; my house is ankle deep in sawdust and mesh fragments; I’ve not had a cooked meal for a week; but it was totally worth it to see them so happy. Also for the massive ego boost – it’s probably silly but I’m really chuffed that I managed to complete this – my usual pastimes are things like embroidery and scrapbooking so I was a bit out of my comfort zone on this project!
Turned out to be this:
I really wanted them to have more space, so started looking for a new cage. There are some nice ones available but for the size I wanted, they were all way out of my price range.
So, given that I’m terrible at maths, have no woodworking experience and am notorious for not planning things through properly – I thought, why not build one myself? What follows is a lot of pictures of it in progress – skip to the bottom if you just want to see the finished cage!)
First – plan it all out carefully – not doing this has been my downfall in the past. As you can see I had to make a lot of modifications after the initial draft! I’ve designed it as big as possible within the space I had spare in my living room. It’s got big doors to get in for cleaning, and is divided into two halves with a ladder leading from one to the other. That way I can block them into the bottom half whiel I clean the top, and vice versa; and if I needed to I could separate the chins, eg if I wanted to monitor how well one was eating.
Crucially, make sure it’s small enough to fit through your doors. In my zeal to give the chins as much space as possible, I first made it too wide, and had to disassemble the side panels and take a bit off. It’s important that it goes through a door as I move it to a cooler room in summer.
The cost of wood and mesh was about £120, I spent a bit on brackets and screws, but already had hinges, bolts and doorhandles in stock. So quite a cheap cage for the size - it's about 140 x 120 x 80.
Then – cut the wood to size and assemble the panels. Here is my “workshop” – yes, it’s a kitchen, and not a particularly big one. I think the biggest hindrance to this project was the lack of space, it made things really awkward.
I don’t have a workbench either – but these bricks worked pretty well!
A tip for those thinking of doing something like this – you can’t just put in a screw at each corner, the panels won’t be strong enough, and will flex when you pick them up. I didn’t realise this and had to make an extra trip to town to buy lots of corner brackets.
Covering them with weldmesh – 16g with ¾” holes as recommended by people on the chin forum. This was painful and time consuming. I ripped my hand open on a sharp edge of mesh and sprayed blood everywhere, which was fortunate because I realised how dangerous it could be for the chins, so I borrowed a file from work and ground all the edges smooth.
Then I needed to screw them all together, which is when I realised I don’t have twelve hands. I didn’t want to pay out for clamps, cos I’ll probably never use them again, so I went round the village begging to borrow them from people. Got quite a few! Another tip – ideally you should clamp it all together *before* you put the mesh on – that way you can check that everything fits together as it should, and it’s easier to make any changes. Then you can take it apart, mesh it, and clamp it back together again. I didn’t think of this till halfway through but luckily it wwas all ok.
Here is the half shelf in the bottom, and the supports for the main shelf in the middle.
These are the only screwed down bits of the middle shelf, the other pieces slot in tightly but lift out for easy cleaning.
I'm not 100% pleased with the shelves. They're made of planks rather than one solid piece, because I got given the wood free. It means there are little cracks where dirt will get trapped, but it also means it's easier to take them in and out for cleaning as they're lighter. I might redo them in future, or I might not.
It would have helped if I’d built it where it was intended to go. But I managed to drag it there anyway. Perfect fit!
And here it is! The top storey isn’t finished yet – there will be more shelves, hammocks etc, as most of it’s just wasted space at the moment. But it’s taken me just over a week to do this and I was losing the will to live! So it will be finished off when I have a bit of spare time. I can’t believe I thought it’d only take me three days *sigh*
It's just stood on a bit of plywood for now, I'm going to try to get a metal tray made for the bottom though. The tiny door on the bottom of the right side is for ease of exercising, I'm going to construct a passage from there to their play area so they can go in and out as they please.
Downstairs:
Upstairs:
They seem to really love it
I put them in late last night and then stayed up for nearly three hours just watching them race around exploring everything.So to sum up: my hands are ripped to shreds; my house is ankle deep in sawdust and mesh fragments; I’ve not had a cooked meal for a week; but it was totally worth it to see them so happy. Also for the massive ego boost – it’s probably silly but I’m really chuffed that I managed to complete this – my usual pastimes are things like embroidery and scrapbooking so I was a bit out of my comfort zone on this project!
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