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[Prophet of Frida]

Over the weekend, I visited with my brother, who does woodworking, and we were talking about what would be involved with making cage accessories for my chinchilla. As we made plans and looked up safe woods and how to prepare it for use and what's already out there being designed and made for others, he pointed out that once the templates were made, it would be fairly easy to make pieces for other chinchilla owners as well.

We want to go slow to make sure we're doing this right and creating things that are safe and useful for chinchillas. I know what I'd like to see him make for my chin, but I thought it might be a good place to start to get input from other chinchilla owners.

What are some wooden items that you would find useful?

(For example, I've been looking for a hidey house that can come up off the floor and sit high in the cage, since that's where I see my chinchilla wanting to sleep. The only time she uses her box on the floor of the cage is when there's someone here. When I come home after being away, she's always sleeping up on a perch, and moves down when people start making noise and turning on lights. I've found some that I like, but availability has been an issue; the winter months clearly aren't a good time to look for woodworking.)

If you could take an existing product and do something to improve it, what would you do?

What designs have you tried that ultimately didn't work out very well?

What wood has worked best for your chinchillas?

If down the road we were to choose a cage to design around that would fit the most owners, what would make the most sense? Ferret Nation?

Thanks! Looking forward to your input. I think this could be fun, if done right.

[gasaraki03]

I do think more of different design houses would be neat add some variety.

For most popular cage i would assume Ferret/Critter nation cages but not for sure.

If you make some stuff you can post it and see if people would buy.

[GrayRodent]

I have a wooden hay feeder from Petsmart that is made of pine and holds the hay in with wooden slats. I'd like to see this design but made wider so I don't have to cram hay into it. Also the slats are too close together so it doesn't dispense hay very well. You have to enclose it enough though to keep the animal from crawling between them and getting injured. I removed a slat to help with the dispensing and it worked for a 400g chinchilla but my growing 300g chinchilla got in there and it scared me.

I use plain old untreated pine to make simple shelves and hold them to the bars with fender washers and stud bolts. It is the in-between grade of pine I found at the store. My chinchilla loves the shelves and chews them regularly. The wood isn't extremely porous so it doesn't do too bad with urine. I know some places offer a splash guard onto the shelves.

I also have a "lava ledge" brand ledge and a similarly shaped wooden ledge that is fastened by one stud bolt. These have a tendency to break bars on cages because they flex the bars and welds. If there is a way to make a chinchilla safe weight distributing bracket for this you might have a marketable product for Ferret Nation cage owners. It might solve the problem with a 3 point mount. I don't have a problem sense I have use a modified parrot cage that is built like a tank.

I use a generic wooden hutch outside of the cage. I used to have one inside with my first chin but he got very territorial so I removed it. Having an open bottom is a good idea for this reason since I could lift it off of him when I wanted to get him out without getting bit. (That chin was not very tame when I got him and was sick with malo so he was never in a good mood) Another feature I like about it is that it has a rim around the top (most do) so chinchillas can chew it.

[Prophet of Frida]

Awesome, thank you for your input!

For inspiration, I've been looking at the CagePlan stuff on eBay, which looks awesome but appears to only be available to ship in the UK.

[GrayRodent]

I should make a correction. I said I used the in-between grades of pine. After purchasing a new piece of lumber yesterday I realized I am using the top grade afterall. (Although sifting through the rough boards at the store I had to wonder why it was marketed as that!) I make sure to select boards that do not have knots or rough spots that can cause foot sores or catch toes.