All lit up

Here's the cage with the lights on. Snazzy huh?

Winter is Coming... Brrr...

When I started thinking up different holiday fleece themes for the cage I was originally going to go with something Christmasy. After giving it some more thought I realized that December 26th my Christmasy themed fleece was going to have to go away until next year so I chose instead to do something wintery.  I picked out Winter Raccoon fleece and a Marshal Ferret blue igloo. I added some tube lights, which I plan to keep up until they no longer work because piggy lights are awesome all year long.  

 mmm.... peppers.

I even topped their wood pellets with some nice soft white care fresh "snow". 

I learned something this day.  I don't like care fresh. Dare I say I loath the stuff?

It gets smelly, tracks ALL OVER THE PLACE and like real snow, not so pretty when it's yellow. 

Here is Margo enjoying it though:

   (A quick disclaimer: ALWAYS cover your ramps, it is very dangerous for them to climb bare wire, they could break a leg. I took it out for the photos so you could see them better and then the ramp liner went back in)

 Then again she will plop down just about anywhere. Isn't she GORGEOUS!!

Marshal ferret blue igloo hidey, not my favorite. They loved it, especially Agnes, 

but the removable floor got peed all over so I ended up taking it off. 

Then she would flip it and turn it into a cage and pee on the side.  

 I added some removable vinyl snowflakes I got on ebay to the cage.  BIG MISTAKE these things are a real pain to remove.  If you want to put in removable decals stick with the peel and stick kind. Avoid the ones you have to smooth on with a credit card.  I'm still peeling off snowflakes!  

I have very little patience. 

Kitchen expansion and Plexiglass viewing windows!

Probably one of my all time favorite cage modifications I have ever done was adding plexiglass viewing windows to the cage.  There are actually FOUR different windows in this cage design. The two main ones are easiest to see.  

Can you spot the plexi windows?

 -Two grid replacement windows in the middle front (thats the easiest one to find).

- One loooong viewing window built into the main coroplast tray, so while it might appear my coroplast try is only 2" high in the front of my cage, it's really 6" high all the way around.  I cut out most of the front coroplast and then installed a plexiglass window using velcro inside the tray. I left a small lip on the front and 6" square on each side to mount the velcro to.  If you look really close in some of these photos you will see the second window at the bottom of my tray.

- yet another window is cut into the front wall of my kitchen.  I made this one the same way as the larger window in my coroplast.  Next time I take it out of the cage I will get some close ups to show you. 

I bought my plexiglass panels precut from tap plastics 

( http://www.tapplastics.com/product/plastics/cut_to_size_plastic/acrylic_sheets_clear/508 )

My grid windows fit inside my connectors. If you want to do this you need 1/8" thick plexiglass (acrylic) cut to the size of your grids. Mine are 14" x 14" You could choose to do the whole front of your cage this way.  If you don't need them to fit inside the connectors go up to at least 3/16" thicker or more.  The thicker the better.  I choose to do my windows this way because if I scratched or damaged the windows I wanted to be able to replace them cheaply and easily.  I also wanted to use the connectors so there is more airflow in the cage. 

Here's my little cuties all grown up. Awe!

I tried expanding my kitchen for a while. Remember that 2x2 quarantine cage I showed you, this was the tray for it. I modified it, cut it down to a 1.5x2 and added the front plexiglass viewing window.

The nice part about the bigger kitchen is my 2x3 fleece fit in with some room to spare. The downside, even with 3 pigs in there, they weren't really soiling the whole thing so I decide to go back to a 1x2 kitchen.

 You can see the viewing window in the front of the kitchen here.  So what you are looking 

at right next to Mabeline is actually THREE layers of plexiglass right there!

 All this fun stuff and the cage is still only one grid high