Guinea pig cage: expert opinion

Now it’s time to hear the whole truth about the guinea pig cage. You may not like some of what has been said, dear consumers and potential buyers, but we do not try to please everyone. We will simply speak the truth and back it up with arguments.

Site Pig.ru is already 17 years old. We stood at the origins of professional breeding of guinea pigs in Russia, and believe me, we understand something about keeping these cute and funny animals.

You probably came to our site from a search engine. From Yandex or Google – it doesn’t matter. You entered the query “guinea pig cage” into the search box and saw something like this:

Of course, in the first place you will see an advertisement for a store selling cages for guinea pigs, from which Yandex receives money for each of your clicks on this advertisement. In second place, Yandex itself will rush to meet the demand by showing you a link to its Yandex.Market trading platform, in which each store also pays Yandex for each of your transitions.

Here, by the way, on the right in the picture you can immediately see the showcase of these stores. How wonderful – everything you need is literally one click away from your wallet! Yes, and the goods are presented immediately from economy options to premium cages.

“Oh, how wonderful! Only 550 rubles!” you think. Well, what else do you think, because it is written – cages for guinea pigs – it is also highlighted in bold so that, God forbid, you do not miss your benefits and savings.

Yes, but for the 17 years of the existence of our site and forum, one of the most common questions among guinea pig breeders is the question “Why does a guinea pig gnaw a cage?” But more on that later…

In the meantime, back to our search for the cell. If we skip in the search results cages for guinea pigs on Avito, where everything is sold the same as for 550 rubles, only for 1500 and used, then we will find a number of sites where “experienced” talk about the advantages and disadvantages of those or other cells. They talk about the pros and cons of various materials … In general, it would seem that everything is fair! But let’s take a closer look at these reviews. What do we see? Well, of course, all the same advertisements in which stores advertise their cages. As a result, it turns out that the purpose of the review about the cage for the guinea pig was reduced to one thing – so that in the end you just click on the ad, and the site owner gets his penny.

“Well, yes!” you say: “We have a market economy. What’s wrong with that?” Indeed, everything seems to be great – you found a cheap guinea pig cage, the site owner got a pretty penny for helping you find the cage, the store made a profit for bringing the cage from China, paid customs fees, paid Yandex for advertising . Everyone seems to be happy!

…Except for the guinea pig itself. For some reason, she does not want to be imbued with all the advantages of a market economy, but continues to stubbornly gnaw at the cage! Gnawing methodically and selflessly, gnawing and swallowing pieces of enamel from the rods, with which they are painted in order to protect against corrosion. And now, when the layer of paint on the rods is already half eaten away and the cage is no longer so aesthetically pleasing, the caring owner finally decides to ask the question on the forum for the thousand and one hundred and tenth time: “So how can we wean a guinea pig from chewing a cage?”

And the answer is so simple – you just need to take the guinea pig out of the cage!

Indeed: there are no rods in the cage – there is nothing for the pig to gnaw. Problem solved!

There are many cages for guinea pigs on the market where a solid transparent plexiglass casing is used instead of metal rods. And the lid made of rods for maintenance of the cage is far above – the guinea pig cannot reach.

Such a cage is actually fraught with a much greater danger. Did you know that according to the instructions, plumbers are supposed to go down into the sewers in special oxygen masks that protect the respiratory system? A few minutes in the sewers without respiratory protection, and an already lifeless body can be raised to the surface!

In a cage closed on all sides by an impenetrable casing, there is also a constant accumulation of toxic gases: ammonia and methane, which are natural waste products (urine and feces). Insufficient ventilation of such a cage causes the guinea pig to constantly breathe in these poisonous gases that accumulate inside the cage. The concentration of these gases, of course, is not sufficient for instant death in a mumps. But data on how much longer a pig would live outside such a cage will obviously not play into the hands of manufacturers. Therefore, such studies have not been carried out.

Our advice to you: if you are in a hurry and have already bought such a cage for your guinea pig, or if you were given a pig in a pet store along with such a cage, then take a drill and drill at least holes in it from two opposite sides. Holes must be drilled without pressure and away from each other, otherwise the plexiglass can simply crack and crumble.

The answer is simple – money! The biggest money in the world is usually earned from the poorest. On people who want to save money without having enough money. There are a lot of such people! And the Chinese are rightfully considered the kings of mass production.

In order to make money on the poor, you need to produce something in mass! Containers, wagons, barges! And this product should be so cheap that it could be bought practically each. Well, indeed, a cage for a pig for 500 or even 1000 rubles can be bought well by almost every first visitor to an online store.

In addition, the Chinese understand that the wholesaler who bought a whole container of these cages in China should also make money on a pig cage, pay for shipping, customs duties; and a reseller who took the batch from the wholesaler and delivered it to online stores; and the online store itself, which paid Yandex for advertising, the girls in the call center for taking orders, the programmer for technical support – everyone should get a small share of the cost of the cell.

That is why this cage should initially cost the Chinese manufacturer 10 rubles apiece. That is why these cages are stamped on large injection molding machines, 1000 pieces per shift, and are sold only in huge wholesale lots. That’s why they are made from the cheapest material on the planet at the moment – plastic!

It becomes simply not profitable for a Chinese manufacturer to make more expensive, high-quality and more suitable material! Take for example a tree. Each board needs to be cut to size, processed, sanded, impregnated with a special impregnation, painted with stain, varnished, dried. And then all these details are also assembled by hand! In order to produce 1000 pieces of such cells per shift, 2000 workers are needed instead of one robot that “eats” only 80 kWh of electricity per shift.

In fact, plastic has two big pluses. Firstly, as we have already found out, this is low cost and secondly, the ability to resist moisture. It is for these qualities that consumers like him so much. However, for some reason, no one has yet thought of building plastic houses for people, but for animals – please!

We already wrote about a cage with a solid transparent casing above – for guinea pigs this is a lightweight version of the Auschwitz gas chamber. The pig in it constantly breathes poisonous gas, so this cage is categorically not suitable for keeping guinea pigs.

A cage with a metal grill seems to be well ventilated, but just look at measurements cages that are offered to you under the guise of a cage for a guinea pig! In fact, in a cage 30 x 40 cm and the hamster will be cramped. It is not surprising that the main occupation of the pig in such a cage is the incessant attempts to get out to freedom by gnawing through the rods.

If we return to our first picture again, we will see that there are also premium-class cells on the market that cost from 5-6 thousand rubles and are quite decent in size. However, for this money, a thoughtful buyer can actually get something better …

The ancestors of domestic guinea pigs in their natural habitat lived quite freely, so the necessary minimum area per guinea pig is considered to be 0,7 sq. meters! Optimal – 1 sq. meter per pig. Here, take a look at the perfect home for guinea pigs:

“Are you out of your mind?” You ask, and you will, of course, be right! Who can allocate as much as half a room in a typical kopeck piece or even a three-ruble note for keeping a guinea pig? It must be either a complete fan, or a lonely person. Pigs are usually raised in families with children. And there is never extra space – we already know 🙂

But guinea pig breeders are smart people, so for comfortable keeping guinea pigs invented cage rack for guinea pigs.

A rack for a guinea pig is no longer quite a cage, but it is not yet a spacious aviary, as in the picture above. This is a compromise that saves a lot of floor space for breeders while still providing a reasonable level of comfort for guinea pigs by increasing the number of floors or tiers that guinea pigs live on.

About what racks are, how they differ, and how to choose the best rack for your favorite pig, read the article “Rack for Guinea Pig”