Hey All
I wanted to post about the cage that Fuzee had called home. It is a Ferplast plastic bottom, plastic middle with a bar lid/top. Below is a picture from the internet but I don't know what it's official name is
The picture of the cage below is slightly bigger than the one that Fuzee had but apart from the size difference the cage is fundamentally the same as the one she had.
It's quite difficult to see from the picture and I don't have a better one available but there is like a indent or small gap/vent in the top between the plastic and the bars. I've got small fingers and could get them in between the space, I'm sure an average sized finger or two would also be able to fit (it's approximately 1.5cm to just under 2.5cm wide. It is part of the cage design and it is through this gap that she has managed to get out. Prior to her disappearance I had seen her put her nose through the gap, whilst hanging upside down from the bars, but no more than a nose and I certainly didn't think her head would fit through. I had no idea that she would be able to get out of this gap and wanted to ensure that I had alerted other forum members with similiar cages to the fact that this is possible.
In the picture below you can see it looks like an indent and it's sitting in the middle between the 2 red tags.
This is the part that she has squeezed through and she wasn't a particularly small hamster.
Fuzee was a messy hamster, she would kick woodshavings around, turn food bowls upside down and would constantly flick her droppings out of the original cage she was in, which is why we put her into the plastic one. She was also a chewer and although i thought there was very little to chew in the cage, she did manage to find things. She had chewed the underside of the plastic lip (inside the cage) where the bars sit at the top. She would do this by hanging upside where she would chew the bars and the plastic simultaneously (it made a racket so when she did this I would feed cardboard through the bars to deter her, or more likely remove the shelf, which then stopped her from reaching it). She seemed to only do it in one corner and once it was "tidied up" and to her satisfaction she stopped. The lip didn't stop the cage from closing and be secured correctly. I would check it frequently to ensure I couldn't lift the bars in any direction when the lid was in it's closed position and it always was the case that they held firm. (I checked this again when I realised she was missing).
You can see in the picture that there are white tags external to the cage with a small amount of plastic sitting within the cage. Again she had chewed the tags on the inside of the cage which didn't stop the 2 pieces being secured together correctly and they didn't separate unless "opened" by myself or OH. Again this was checked every week as I would always lift the cage prior to putting her back in after it was cleaned out, by the clear plastic part to ensure it was still together and not a risk or likely to come apart during the course of her activities.
I did notice the other day the adaptation that Pophammy posted for a similiar cage and think something like this would work on this type of cage, especially if the holes used to fix the protection sheet onto the bars, which then doubles up as air holes, were made in such a way that the sheet covers the bars and the gap.
See the thread in DIY (Do It Yourself) Hamster Projects! titled Plastic Bar Cover - a Solution to Bar Chewing.
The instructions that Pophammy has posted are comprehensive and although I haven't had the need to carry the task out I am absolutely positive that they are easy to follow and that the solution she has provided would save someone else a lot of heart ache. I guess if you want to stop a chewer from chewing then I think a glass acquarium type arrangement is the only way to go and one of suitable depth to ensure that your clever hamster, who is likely to stack things on top of each other to reach the top, is unable to do so.
I apologise for the length of this post but hope that it maybe assists in stopping another little one from unnecessarily escaping.
thanks for reading.
suga
Ferplast Plastic Cages - Warning Escape is Possible :-(
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