Cage extension for hybrid that loves to burrow?

[alpacassei]

My youngest hybrid, Marcello, loves to burrow and climb. I'm building him a lollipop stick house/climbing toy and I was thinking of extending his cage (duna fun) by buying a combi 1 and filling it most the way with fitch so that he has a burrowing room without sacrificing space in his main cage. Is this a good idea or are there better alternatives?

[Drago]

I can't think of any better alternatives especially if you have a store bought cage, which are harder to customize and expand. I think Marcello would appreciate the extra space and burrowing area so I'd say go right ahead

[Pebbles82]

I'd advise spending the money on something a bit bigger like a duna multy - they do better with one floor area which you can make into different areas and levels, and have a digging area in that. Although the duna fun is taller with levels, but you could still have a level in the duna multy. The Combi 1 costs about £32 - the same price as the Duna Multy from Porton Aquapet. It comes in red and blue as well. I think also you could add the Combi 1 and she might not use it, but when it's all one floor area they tend to use it all.

Cage Duna Multy

The advantage of something lower and wider means more floor area for digging etc and less fall risks - especially as they get older when they can't manage levels.

You can see the difference in floor size/space on this thread Although it's a mini duna rather than a duna fun, it's the same size base and compared with the stanard duna multy you can see the difference.

Cage Picture Comparisons, *NO CHAT*

There are some nice set ups on this thread - Zoozone 1's but they're the same size as the Duna Multy. I think the duna fun shelf fits as well.

Zoozone Cage Setups

You could fence off one end with a bendy stick bridge on its side and have it as a digging area, or do something like this (gabber rex but again about the same as the duna multy with digging tower). Fluffymunchkins second photo. Also near the top, mangoand mimi's duna multy shows the tunnels dug by her dwarf as there's plenty of depth for substrate. So rather than a digging area, you could just have deeper substrate in the whole cage.

Show me, your Chinese hamster's Cages!

[alpacassei]

He's only 12 weeks old and he seems like the kind of hamster that prefers to have multiple smaller cages to explore through tunnels than to have just one larger cage. Although he loves exploring tunnels and small spaces he gets nervous in larger spaces so it would be better for him to have more small cages than one large cage. Hopefully as he gets older, I'll be able to move him into a larger main cage though.

I'm thinking of just adding my spare mini duna to his cage since it has more space than the combi 1?

[InkyPen]

I've done something not too dissimilar, but using a bin cage as an extension. In this case, it was because the Ferplast cage that was pressed back into service by DP's family especially for Inky (so we couldn't get rid of it!) was far too small to be good enough for a Syrian.

It looks a bit like this


but made out of a 48L Really Useful Box which I have meshed on top.

We did it mainly for the extra floor space, but there's no reason why we couldn't fill it up with bedding if she was a big digger.