How to make a showcase for a chinchilla with your own hands?

Chinchillas are touching and cute rodents that need the attention of their owner. How long the chinchilla will delight us with its presence depends on the care we surround it with and on the conditions that we create for the animal to exist in a city apartment.

Experimentally, experts have come to the conclusion that a special showcase cage will be the optimal habitat for this rodent. Such showcases can be found in specialized stores, but if a person who wants to have a chinchilla in the house has certain locksmith and carpentry skills, he can save a lot of money by making this place of residence of the future pet with his own hands. Let's try to figure out what a showcase is, and how does it differ from an ordinary cell?

Imagine a grandmother's sideboard, or rather, its upper part. This is a cabinet with doors at the bottom and glass shelves at the top, again behind glass doors, which are made sliding or opening. This upper part is the showcase. For a chinchilla, the shelves can be made of plywood, and the glass doors can be replaced with fiberglass material or something similar - if only the light would penetrate.

I must say that a chinchilla will feel much more comfortable in a showcase than in a cage, and there are many reasons for this.

• The showcase is more spacious than the cage.
• The cage is made of twigs, there is nowhere to hide in, and the chinchilla needs its closed burrow. Showcases are optimally adapted for this purpose - the owner can improvise with closed areas quite freely.
• There is more space in the showcase than in the cage, because you can make any depth of it.
• Various natural materials that the owner can use to build a showcase will suit a rodent more than metal rods. Chinchillas prefer secluded places where they can hide in case of need, and if they are made of wood - just fine.
• The rodent behind the glass window creates less noise and does not bother the owners so much.
• It is easy to get it out of the showcase if several doors are provided in the front wall.
• If debris constantly pours out of the cage through the bars, then the solid wall will prevent this unpleasant feature, besides providing access to each "floor" of the showcase, cleaning will not take much time.
• A showcase can be "disguised" if it is made of materials matching the color of the furniture set.
• If you equip the showcase with wheels, it can move from room to room in order to create an acceptable temperature regime for the rodent and not overheat it. It should not be forgotten that temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius can cause heatstroke in chinchillas, because these animals come from the highlands of the Andes of the South American continent.

Having come to the conclusion that a showcase will be the most convenient habitat for a chinchilla, you should pay attention that you can make a showcase yourself from wood, aluminum profiles, and plastic structures. There is a certain set of requirements for the manufacture of display cases:

• the smallest space for a chinchilla should not be less than 800x800x500 mm;
• when keeping a larger number of individuals, the sizes increase multiply;
• the materials from which the showcase is made must be quite durable and safe, since any rodents have a habit of trying them "by the teeth";
• the showcase should be dry, warm, well (but not excessively) lit, and have good ventilation;
• during manufacturing, sharp edges, protruding corners of the panels, which could cause accidental injury to the pet, should be removed.

This is one of the most important requirements for display cases of this type so that the animal is not cramped. Chinchillas require at least 0.4 m2 per individual. Moreover, this area does not depend on either the length or the width of the showcase - both can be changed either at will, or based on the dimensions of the apartment.

Why is it often advised to use the skeletons of old cabinets as a basis? The point is the convenience and simplicity of its conversion - you will need to spend a minimum of effort to turn it into a showcase. Although a certain danger to the pet may lie precisely in the material from which the cabinet was made. Particleboard, which is the most common cabinet wall material and consists of epoxy resins, can poison a rodent with its components if it manages to gnaw off some of it.

Here is a rough step-by-step process guide describing how to build a display cabinet out of a cabinet.

1. Remove the doors.
2. If there are shelves, cut openings in them. Chinchillas will need them for transitions between levels.
3. In the event that there are no shelves, there is room for imagination - the shelves can be placed in any order.
4. The material for the shelves must necessarily be natural wood, since chinchillas prefer to “taste” exactly horizontal surfaces - the vertical wall is less convenient for gnawing.
5. It will be necessary to cut ventilation holes in the upper part of the cabinet body so that air masses can circulate freely inside the display case.
6. Do not forget to tighten these holes with a metal mesh - such a chinchilla will definitely not even try to gnaw through.
7. The removed cabinet doors are replaced with a metal mesh stretched over the frame, or they are made of transparent material. Most experts recommend the mesh.
8. To do the work on the manufacture of such a frame, it is recommended to take the same removed "native" doors and replace the panels with a mesh, leaving the outer door frame about 100 mm wide to secure the mesh.
9. It is very good if the lower drawers were initially provided for in the cabinet design. This will make the refurbishment even less energy-consuming - just at the next stage you will have to remove the floor of the main part of the cabinet and change it to a frequent mesh, under which it is easy to place a container where the droppings and debris will fall through. This will greatly facilitate the cleaning process.

If there is no cabinet suitable for conversion, the showcase can be made by hand. To provide the most comfortable manufacturing conditions, you will have to use:

• screwdriver;
• self-tapping screws of different sizes;
• jigsaw;
• new door hinges;
• drill;
• drill / swing;
• sealing tape.

Since it is difficult to guess with the dimensions, there are no ready-made drawings "for all occasions" - they will have to be made independently by measuring the allotted area of ​​the room. Accordingly, the required amount of material is also selected. This might be a rough sketch for a medium-sized room.

Usually, racks are used as legs, in the case when the showcase floor is made of mesh, and a certain gap is required between the mesh and the floor, so that a container for collecting chinchilla waste is included under the mesh.

In addition to simple shelves with holes, a showcase for chinchillas is also equipped with some accessories. For example, as a hole, that is, a shelter from daylight, a small house can serve, which is easy to make in accordance with the dimensions of the showcase itself.

The feeder can be arranged in the form of a manger made of wood or the same metal mesh, where you will need to put hay, or other feed.

If the chinchilla is limited in its physical activity, it will quickly gain weight. Therefore, the so-called town will be very appropriate. It should at least consist of:

• running wheel;
• multilevel shelves connected by passages in the form of a suspended bridge, tunnel or staircase;
• swing / hammock.

How to make a showcase for chinchillas with your own hands, see the next video.