My two guinea pigs, Ginny and Sakura, happily shared this two-level C&C (cubes & coroplast) cage for over four years.
It was quite easy to build using the instructions that we found on www.guineapigcages.com. This particular cage is a 2 grid x 3 grid cage, with a 1 grid x 2 grid upper loft. Each grid is about 14 inches, which gave the girls a nice lower level of 7.5 square feet.
We found the supplies locally, which saved us money.
Building a ramp to the upper loft was a little more challenging. This was our solution.
The Mini-Grid Ramp
In 2006, I was fortunate to find two boxes of mini-grids at Bed Bath & Beyond. Sadly, I haven’t seen them available anywhere else since. Once in a while I’ll hear stories of others finding them online, but I haven’t been as lucky.
I used many of these small grids for building the ramp. I cut coroplast (corrugated plastic) to line it, but did not zip-tie it directly to the grids; instead, I separately attached the ramp and the coroplast to the upper level using plastic ties (zip-ties, cable ties). Both the ramp and the coroplast liner moved up and down independently, as needed, for easy cleaning. A plastic “S-hook” secured the ramp to the side of the cage, so there was no swaying.
I sewed Velcro to both my fleece cage liners and the Sherpa fleece ramp covering, so that everything stayed in place while the guinea pigs were dashing up and down their ramp.
The girls loved their mini-grid ramp. In this photograph, Ginny is on the mini-grid ramp and Sakura is in the upper loft, eating hay. Draping a small towel over a ramp often makes it more enjoyable for guinea pigs; they seem to like to run through tunnels. Towels also make great toys, but don’t let your guinea pigs chew on them!
It is easy to build a C&C cage, and also inexpensive compared to buying a simple guinea pig cage at the local pet store. C&C cages can also be easily customized and changed. There are some wonderful ideas here:
An earlier version of this post can be found on the Guinea Lynx Forums.
Sakura’s single-level cage photos are here.
Very informative post! Especially loved the pictures of Ginny and Sakura =)
Thanks!
What a detailed information page, I love your mini grids ramp!
I really love it when people photograph things step by step instead of just writing it out, I am more of a visual learner, and these type of instructions really HELP!
Looks so clean and nice, and of course, Sakura and Ginny only made the pictures even nicer! 🙂
So glad you enjoyed the step-by-step pictures. 🙂
Looks like a fun set up! I really like the fleece sleeve for the ramp.
The girls had a lot of fun in their cage! The fleece sleeves for the ramp were very handy.
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