Playpen advice

[serdegu]

Currently in preparation for getting three or four degus. One thing I'm having trouble with is finding a suitable large playpen/run for them to exercise outside of the cage. Most are designed more for rabbits and chinchillas, so the bars are too wide and the sides too low. What do you use?


What about the foldable, mesh kind? Example: www.amazon.co.uk/Fabric-Rabbit-Guinea-Playpen-D114cm/dp/B00CHVRFZS/ref=sr_1_34?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1409150143&sr=1-34&keywords=playpen 
Could it withstand excitable, supervised degu play or would it be chewed to death?  

[yasmin]

I think they can chew that up. I have a room especially built for mine but when I need to round them up to put them back in the cage (only a few of them will go back on their own). I use large cardboard boxes or thick plastic trays – at least two feet high. I lean them up against each other, other boxes, and against the cage and other furniture in the room to box them into a defined area. Mine can't scale flat areas higher than three feet.

[littlepaws1999]

It would be much safer to get something along the lines of this: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B000V9KIU2/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1409185173&sr=8-1&pi=SX200_QL40

I have something similar although from a different company that I can get here in Canada .

[ntg]

They'd get out of a 30cm high playpen no bother, the best thing you can do is make your own playpen and fit it to the cage to allow them to go in and out at their own will.

Mine is made out of 12mm MDF boards 700mm tall and the boards are joined using the long continuous hinges top and bottom to stop them from chewing through. There's a how to guide for it here:

deguworld.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=Cage&action=display&thread=7310

[titchycatnipsandwich]

My friend helped me build a playpen for my goos to have plenty of space to be reacquainted with each other in. It didn't end so well, as I got badly bitten and there was a furball of death, but the playpen itself is sound.

I do have to be careful about them climbing it, we made a wooden framework of 1.8m long by 0.9m high for two sides of the rectangle, and 0.9 by 0.9 for the other two sides. It's then got mesh in the frames, hence why they can climb it, but they love climbing and as they're never unsupervised in it it doesn't seem to matter as much. My goos bounce when they drop; I used to get worried but now I jsut check they haven't broken anything and let them carry on.

My only problem so far is that I can't easily get in and out at the moment, space constraints mean that the end with the flap for me to get in/out is either against a wall or has about 30cm of clearance. My tip is that whatever you do, make sure you have room for it

[ericadan10]

Martins makes good cages, and there is a playpen on this page. Maybe you could get that, or make something similar to it?
www.martinscages.com/products/cages/travel/