Mary Allen
Designing your pet’s home creatively contributes to the animal’s well-being and increases the feel-good factor of your favorite a lot. Find out here how you can creatively design the home of small animals and how you can easily make small animal accessories yourself.
Clay: a Tried and Tested Building Material
Loam is ecological (consists of clay, sand, and silt) and does not contain any toxic or harmful substances. It is great for building houses, caves, passages, or entire tunnel systems. Because of its coarse and rough surface, it is also great for climbing: It is ideal for enclosures for gerbils, for example. One advantage of clay is that it neutralizes moisture and odor so that even after years in the cage, it does not start to grumble. It doesn’t matter if he gets some urine, the liquid can simply be wiped off. Another big plus is that the clay is very stable and therefore cannot be gnawed down.
The processing is not particularly difficult once you have familiarized yourself with the material. Dry powder is best, which can be mixed as desired. So you can vary the thickness of the clay, depending on what you need. When buying, it is essential to pay attention to the ingredients. It is best to work on an insensitive surface, as the clay can crumble and spill, especially when it is wet. There are almost no limits to the final design, there are only a few basic rules: If you want to work with clay, it should be damp. This also applies if you want to build something up on a part that has already dried: In such a case, simply moisten the dry part and get started. Since the clay takes a relatively long time to dry, you should definitely use supports or substructures so that it does not collapse or change its shape too much during the drying process. It can also be baked, but air drying is generally easier, as the entire construction does not have to be laboriously packed into the oven.
Clay: Finer Than Its (Clay) Brother
Clay is similar in texture and design options: However, it is easier to process and thus leaves you with all the freedom you need to shape. You even get special rodent clay that is designed for the design of the cage. Even after moistening clay, you can simply continue to process it even after a long break. When designing, you should note that the mass contracts after drying. Not that the rabbit won’t fit through the tube afterward. So that the structures are stable, the raw material should be applied thickly. It can be air-dried or baked like clay. Slightly brown discoloration occurs when baking, but this creates a great, natural look.
Tiles: (Bathroom) Design for Rodents
Tiles are commonly found in bathrooms, kitchens, and flooring. They are easy to care for, easy to clean, and do not absorb liquids. These practical properties can also be used in the rodent home. In addition, depending on the model, you can of course achieve creative and visual effects with tiles.
Tiles are ideal for cleaning the toilet area or selected pee corners more easily or to protect certain areas from moisture. The installation instructions are also straightforward: You get the tiles you want (no plastic) and also a solvent-free glue that acts as an adhesive and joint filler. The color, shape, and size of the tiles are completely up to you. So that nothing is messed up, you should use a mat. Then it goes very quickly: Simply coat the tiles with glue and press them onto the substrate for about 20 seconds. This is how you proceed with the entire planned area. If the glue oozes too much out of the joints afterward, you can wipe it away or just leave it there: it becomes transparent as it dries.
Enclosure Facility: Hammock to Relax
Not only do people love to relax in the hammock, but they are also particularly popular with rats and guinea pigs. The construction of the hammock is simple and the construction is quick: All you need are two pieces of fabric or fleece and four cords.
To do this, you simply put the pieces of fabric on top of each other and bring them into the same shape, then fold the edge 1 cm inwards and pin the edges in place. By the way, fleece is softer but has the disadvantage that a lot of litter gets stuck, which you have to laboriously remove by hand before washing. Then you push the cords in at the corners in such a way that a loop is created; The hammock can then be hung up on these loops. Then everything is sewn all around and the mat is ready!
Homemade Hay Rack
These building instructions are also not difficult to implement. All you need is a chipboard floor (15 x 21 cm), a total of eight square timbers (2x 21 cm length, 6 x 15 cm), and 20 round timbers, each 5 mm thick.
First, you screw together a frame from the 21 cm and two of the 15 cm square timbers, which then form the upper end of the rack. Then you put the frame flush on the chipboard and drill holes 3 cm apart for the “bars” of the hayrack in both parts. Make sure that you leave out the corners: this is where the supports go.
At the four corners, you screw the remaining four squared timbers from below to the chipboard and then nail the frame onto these supports. Now you have a cube that is only closed on one side – the bottom. The round rods are now inserted through the holes in the frame and in the chipboard, which are then sawn off flush. Four of the open sides are thus closed and the upper part remains open to fill in the hay there.