NIC cage design option

[Twigness]

Hello there. Well I am still searching for my polish rabbit. But with so much excitment I did an NIC cage design and would like suggestions/opinions.it will fit in a slanted corner of our room. That is why the top is slanted. The bottom and one protruding side with three grids I am deciding to make storage shelves on either or both. I guess it will depend on how big I'd want the rabbits cage to be. The darker lines in the picture tell the different levels/parts of the cage. The middle part with a small shelf on one side will be the rabbit part of the cage. As you can see it is three and a half grids wide if I don't include the one side. Or the bottom for more space too. But anyway it will be 2grids wide. Will that be enough stretch room for one polish bunny? The top part I will be putting up mesh with the grids and it will be my sugar gliders updated space. If you don't know sugar gliders they are the tinest marsupials that need a lot of space to "glide" around the cage. I was just wanting to knowif this is a good design? Or if you guys have suggestions or?? Gah! Sorry the pic is sideways... I can't figure out how to fix it

 

[Imbrium]

how much time will the rabbit have outside the cage each day? that has a lot to do with how big of a cage you need... 2 wide x 3.5 long with 2-3 levels is a good size if it gets a lot of "out" time or has an attached run (with playpens or NIC grid fencing), but if it's going to have more like the minimum 4-5h a day out, you'll want to go bigger.

I'm pretty iffy on the combo rabbit/glider cage idea for a couple reasons...
first of all, they love to throw food around and even if you have a glider kitchen for them, they often still manage to get some outside it... plus they have a tendency to scent-mark the bars/mesh of the cage... if it's built into the top of the rabbit cage, you won't be able to take it outside from time to time for deep cleaning.

secondly, to give the rabbit a good amount of levels/stretch room, the rabbit portion of the cage is going to be like 3-4' tall, which means you won't be able to have a lot of height in the glider portion if you want to be able to access it easily to get them out and to clean it. gliders need a *lot* more vertical space than horizontal, since they primarily glide down/climb back up rather than side-to-side - a good glider cage is 5-6' tall.

I see no reason NIC grids meshed with hardware cloth couldn't work for suggies, but ideally, you'd want to do something like 2Wx2-3Lx5H (in grid-lengths), which is 2-3 boxes of grids - for around the same cost you could do a PVC cage (which would have a much lighter frame, making it easier to move).

 

[Twigness]

Ah. Thanks for the input. What is a PVC cage though?

 

[Imbrium]

here's a good tutorial on PVC cages: http://www.sugarglider.com/journal/AUtigers350z/How_To_Sugar_Glider_PVC_Cage_602.asp ... they're the glider equivalent of a NIC cage

some of the connectors have to be ordered online because they're "furniture grade" (ie not meant to be used for plumbing)... the rest of the supplies can be found at any hardware store. I recommend going to the hardware store before buying stuff online to figure out whether their 90 degree "elbow" connectors are curved on the outside of the angle or squared off (since a curve in it, like these - http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100164943/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=PVC&storeId=10051 - could allow for an escape (squared off ones look like the ones sold on http://www.littlegreenhouse.com/accessory/pvc.shtml ). if you can't find the squared off ones locally, you may need to order those online as well. if you're trying to find the hardware cloth in-store, ask an employee where the chicken wire is - they might not know what you're talking about if you ask for hardware cloth, and it should be right beside the chicken wire. it comes in metal, plastic-coated metal and plastic varieties. you'll want the 1/2'' plastic mesh for most pet sugar gliders; the exception is that if you're breeding yours, you should go with the 1/4'' mesh.