Homemade Cage... ?

[ratamataz]

Forgive me if people are sick of discussing homemade cages. :cheeky: I did a search and the general consensus seems to be "don't waste your money, buy a CN".

However, what if the cage ISN'T a waste of money OR time?
My handy husband is a journeyman carpenter, and he is very, very good at what he does. For him, making a cage would be an easy afternoon project and cost as much as a sheet of melamine or birch plywood (which is just as hard, durable and waterproof as melamine, only it looks much nicer), which is about a whopping $35 for a 4X8 sheet, plus a couple extra bucks for the strips to cover exposed edges, and a few dollars for a roll of hardware cloth.
It would be very, very easy, and he can make it look like a fancy piece of furniture, too. (In fact, with his expectations, it would be of no less quality than the cabinets he builds for million dollar homes downtown, LOL.)

I'm very tempted to at least give it a shot!
And if the ratties still ended up destroying it or I end up hating it, all it costs is some cheap materials, and an afternoon of work that hubby would actually thoroughly enjoy.

What do you guys think? Still not worth it? The cage my ratties are in now is acceptable, but not the nicest in the world. It's just a 30X18X24 wire cage, with a large homemade level made out of a thick plastic lunch tray (it actually works amazingly well, it tilts down slightly, and the food and water dishes sit on a paper towel, and the material of the tray is grooved and etched in such a way that it draws moisture (ie; pee) away from itself, and the pee travels to and is absorbed by the paper towel, and the rest of the tray stays completely dry.)
They have several large fleecy hammocks and a tube, and hidey houses, and toys and fleece ropes and stuff, so it is a perfectly functional and comfortable cage.
HOWEVER, my rattie's aren't coming out of their shell and I'm contemplating getting a couple more so that maybe it will bring them out and give them more confidence if they are in a bigger group. (Or it could backfire on me and the new rats will just feed off the nervousness of the old rats, and then I'll have FOUR shy and unsocial rats instead of just two, but that's neither here nor there. :lol: )

Anyway, I'm not sure how much further into rats I want to get, so I'm not keen on dropping lots O' cash on a nice CN or martins, and there is never anything for sale on CL or kijiji that I would be willing to buy. But I want to keep my options open at the same time. Oh, how I regret selling my FN and giving away my martins! :emb:

 

[MomRat]

The 2 biggest issues with a homemade cage are ease of cleaning and smell retention. Yes, anyone with decent carpentry skills can put together a frame and staple on hardware mesh. But the things you have to take into thought are how you are going to seal the wood, for the frame and the floors? Many many coats of polyurethane might prevent pee from soaking into the wood and stinking, until your kids chew on it. Solutions might be designing it to where the wood is not accessible by the rats. Don't get galvanized hardware mesh; you want powder coated - otherwise the metal will soak up the pee and you will NEVER get rid of the stink, and all his beautiful hard work will be for nothing. Will it be all one unit, like a bookshelf, or in smaller hook together units, for breaking down(for moving, for cleaning, etc)? How will you clean it? Cages need to be hosed down outside or in the shower from time to time, they just get gross(as you know from owning a FN/Martins, I'm sure). So no, Homemade cages aren't always a bad Idea - they're just usually more work in the maintenance realm than a store bought. If he designs it really well, and takes the use of the object into consideration(and not just that it needs to hold rats and be big enough) I bet you could have a really beautiful, one of a kind piece. =)