 Hi everyone, it's Allison. Welcome back to the Tiny Herd. So today we're going to be going over my DIY guinea pig cage. Oh, sorry. It's Allison. Welcome back to the Tiny Herd. So today we're going to be talking about my DIY guinea pig cage. So I have full instructions and I'm going to walk through them with you kind of an overview of the cage. So my dad built this cage for me a couple years ago when I had the four female guinea pigs and he helped me write full instructions on how he built this cage. So since we're not able to do a full tutorial since this cage is already built, I'm printed out the instructions and we're going to walk through them as well as we can today and show you step by step as well as I can how this cage was built. So like I said, there are full instructions. I have them here. Three or four pages. You can get these instructions for yourself on our website. I will have the blog post linked down below. It has all of the dimensions, all the materials, all that good stuff. So I'm not going to probably get into too much of the exact specifics in this video. I just kind of want to show you an overview of how it was actually built, but all the dimensions, what materials we used, what kind of screws we used, step by step is in the instructions. So you can get those for yourself if you want to build your own cage. So step one of the instructions is about cutting your pieces to the correct dimensions. So like I said, all of the dimensions and specifics and cutting instructions are all in the actual directions, but basically you want to cut out your bottom piece, which is one big solid piece, and then decide which pieces you want to be your wooden sides, and then make sure that you cut sides to be the correct length for the back and the side you want. And then also cut your plexiglass to size. So you can see I have a piece here for the door, a piece here for the front, and then there used to be a piece of plexiglass across right here that I have since taken off and unscrewed so that I could add this little 2x2 area for the girls. So first step is just cutting out the pieces and making sure you decide what you want to be solid wood and what you want to be plexiglass. Step two of the instructions is about laying out your panels to assemble the wooden pieces of the cage. So like I said, the bottom is one solid piece, and then for this cage, the first thing that we're done is make sure you have a big enough place to lay everything out, so this was built in our garage. And then my dad put the side piece and the back piece on first, and they're attached using cam locks. And then you want to make sure that before you just screw things in to the melamine, you have to pre-drill holes in melamine, otherwise they will split when you try to put a screw in it. So what my dad did, he took the bottom piece and for this piece over here, he pre-drilled into the bottom so that he could attach this piece. So there was holes pre-drilled through this side piece, and there were holes pre-drilled into the bottom. And then once the holes were pre-drilled, he took the screws and actually ran them through all the way to attach this piece. And he did the same thing for the back, and that was so that it was not splitting the wood and it was a more secure attachment. And like I said, he did use cam locks, which means if you don't know what those are, it's kind of like a locking mechanism where you put a little screw in one piece and then there's a little circular piece that goes in the other piece of wood, and then they kind of lock together. If you don't know what those are, there's tons of YouTube videos on those, and there's a little bit of a description in the actual instructions, but lay out your pieces, pre-drill your holes, and then attach your wooden pieces. So for me, that was the back and the side. Okay, so now we're going to talk about the door. So if you've never seen a video of my DIY cage before, this door right here is actually, this plexiglass, rather, is actually a door. So it folds all the way down so that I can easily get into the cage and bother a kelly pig. So this makes cleaning really easy. So to talk about how this door is attached, so there's a support here, and there's a support on this side, and these are attached. This one is attached from the side over here, and this one is attached from the bottom. And again, you have to pre-drill your holes, otherwise the melamine will crack when you tighten the screws. And then for the actual hinge, get you guys a good shot, you can see the hinge is attached to the bottom of the cage and the front of this piece of plexiglass. And then there is a piece of wood on the inside of the cage that the screws from the hinge are ran through and attached to. So this just holds the hinge onto the plexiglass and gives it more support so that you don't just have like loose screws in this thin piece of glass. So that makes a good support on there and it makes it really easy to just slide the door right down. And it's very secure on there. And then to close the door, we have these carriage bolts that are run through from the inside. There's a soft rubber washer on there just to keep the glass from getting scratched and all that. And then you close the door and there is a wing nut that attaches that just screws right on. And that's what I use to hold the door closed. And that is just how the door works. It's very, very convenient for cleaning, makes it really easy to get in the back, under the loft, makes it easy access to the pigs. And I didn't know my dad was adding this when he was building the cage and it turned out to be a really great feature that I'm glad he decided to add onto my cage. Next, moving on to the rest of the glass, which it's a little bit dirty, so sorry about that. This is attached again using this support. And then you pre-drill your holes and put your screw in your washer. Then you throw your pellet bowl. You put your screw in your washer through. Make sure your holes are pre-drilled. That's how it's done all the way across here. And you can see the glass does go down and covers the edge. So this is glass and it's covering the edge of the wood. And I did that just so that the whole piece of the floor was the whole cage. I didn't lose any space of the floor. And then once this piece was attached, the side piece that used to be over here was attached exactly the same way. So when I took it off, I just unscrewed these. It took the glass off. It's very easy. But to attach this corner, I actually used aquarium sealant, which is like a plastic silicone type of material. You can see there's a little bit left on there. So I just, that piece was attached and this piece was attached. And then we taped them together from the top so they were held together. And then I used that aquarium sealant to actually basically glue them together. And that just made a nice watertight seal that is not toxic to the pets. And while we were talking about the aquarium sealant, once the cage was built, I did take it and run. You can see it right there a little bit. I did run it all the way around all the seams of the cage just to make it nice and watertight in so that none of the wood would get any wetness or pee or anything in it. So the cage would last a little bit longer. Moving on to talk about the loft. This was built exactly the same way as the cage. So the pieces were cut out. The bottom is a piece. There's a support right here. And then there's the two back wooden pieces. There's a little support right here. And then there's the glass on the front and the glass on the sides. So same process for the whole thing. This support was attached from this side. This one was attached from the bottom right here. And then this piece for the door of the loft was attached the exact same way that the bottom one was. So there's a piece of wood in there to attach the screws just like before. So you can see the hinge attachment on this part a little bit better than the other part. And then it's held on the same way. These pieces of glass were attached exactly the same way. Screwed into the bottom. Make sure you pre-drill your holes. And we just put them from the loft to the edge so that there was no worry about a piggy having a fall. And then the loft was a little bit of an innovative thing we had to come up with. So you can see there is glass attached to either side the same exact way. It is just a piece of melamine just like the rest of the wood in the cage. And we put the glass on the sides so that nobody would fall off the side. And then it is attached again just by using a hinge so you can see it lifts up and down which makes it easy to put fleece below it. And it is just attached with a hinge attached to the bottom of the wood here on the ramp and the hinge attached to the bottom of the loft wood. Then we realized that it was a little bit shaky once it was attached to the cage which it is attached using the cam locks again so the cam lock pieces are in the cage side and the screws for the cam locks are in the loft. So the lofts can be lifted right off when the cam locks are loosened and there's just four holes you have to match up to put the loft on and off. So we realized that it was a little bit shaky when attached even though we use cam locks. So we just cut this piece of PVC it's plastic it's really easy to clean and it's white and it went with the rest of the cage and it's very easily removed. You just lift up on the loft a little bit take it out that makes it really easy to put on top of a liner as well and it holds up the loft really nicely. So that is the whole design of the loft again all the specifics dimensions all that are in the instructions. Just some final thoughts about building the cage. So you're looking at the little piglets right now. This cage that I built with these dimensions was the absolute minimum size for four guinea pigs which is what I had four female guinea pigs at the time this was built. It is about equal to a two by six it's slightly narrower slightly longer I believe but it came out to about the same floor space. So if you look at the cage some finishing touches I did I now use a towel there's a piece of wood on there right now but I now use a towel as the ramp covering and there's a little piece of rubber velcro up at the top that I binder clip it onto because you can see if I take this back you can see the velcro here is really gross and hay and everything sticks to it. So we used to have a rubber covering on here that I could remove and wipe down and put back on but I would not recommend that so much because my piggies there's an Andy right behind you you almost stepped on his head because I would not recommend the rubber so much because my pigs chewed it all up and I didn't really want them eating rubber. So now I just use a towel one other thing I wanted to point out if you don't want the edges of your wood to look unfinished these are actually all painted white. So this edge is painted white this is painted white and that's just a little touch that my dad did so that it wasn't like wood and white you can see here this is also a piece of melamine this is what the side will look like if you don't paint it or you can get melamine tape that you like iron on and it gives a nice white look as well. So final thoughts about the cage you can see a big overview of it it is pretty big it is sitting on there's one Ikea CalX unit underneath it and then I have adjustable Ikea legs that are just screwed right into the bottom of it when you are getting the Ikea legs to put on it make sure you do not have screws that are bigger than your melamine thickness otherwise it will go through and the point end of the screw will be where your pigs are walking and you don't want that so you will probably have to get different screws that are a little bit shorter but that's what I used to hold up my cage it's worked really well there's this is holding these two pieces up there's a leg in the middle to support the middle of the weight and then there's two legs on that end so that I have a little bit of storage and then also the bunnies can play under there as well so there's an overview of our big DIY getting pig cage like I said I tried to walk through as well as I could without I mean obviously being able to rebuild the whole cage and do a full tutorial you can get these instructions on my website the blog post will be linked down below has all the specifics all the materials all of that kind of stuff sizing what size pieces to cut everything is in the instructions if you guys end up having any questions about anything if you want to build this cage for yourself shoot me a comment leave a comment on my website find me on instagram any of those things and I will ask my dad and try to get you an answer thank you guys so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe if you did you can find us on facebook instagram and twitter it's all the tiny herd and I will see you guys next time bye