Bar Chewing
Hello everyone,
I lurk here when I get a spare moment to look but don't post very often - but I wanted to thank people who have posted some really good advice with regards to the universal bar chewing problem: funny how the really simple things are usually absolute genius...
I really want to stress that I'm in no way passing any of this off as my idea, but I can't find the original threads that made these suggestions and I wanted to highlight the ideas and thank the original posters.
Firstly, I was a bit worried that the play box we made was getting too small, so I liberated two archive boxes from work and taped the lids together upside down to make a base. I then cut the actual boxes in half so that they would be tall enough that he couldn't climb out, but still short enough that we could interract with the lil fella. This came out of the video someone had posted where they'd velcroed some poster board together, which looked a lot more professional!
Secondly, Pepe bless his little hammy heart just doesn't see the point in chewing away on a boring old piece of wood if there's no incentive, no matter how brightly coloured it is... ! So, I thought the empty toilet roll folded round food idea was also genius. I can make one last for about 3 days and now I have about 3 back-up rolls waiting for when the current one has been annihilated!
Lucky 'ole Pepe nearly lost his tiny mind in excitement when we introduced a wooden chew stick hollowed out and stuffed with herbs. But again, once he'd got down as far as his teeth would reach, he rapidly lost interest. So I save up the smaller nuts and things from his muesli mix and stuff the empty ends with those.
We're pretty sure his bar chewing habit is down to attention seeking, as he always stopped as soon as we approached the cage. Now I'm just worried that we're over-feeding... but he seems to take a massive amount of satisfaction out of rearranging his food store - even down to the point of moving it around to face the back of the cage every time we clean him out and face it towards us (so that we can check how much is in there and regulate how much we give him).
Lastly, my next project is to build a maze out of the inside of wine bottle boxes - thanks again to someone's bright idea from this forum!
So, apologies this has turned into a bit of a novella, but thanks so much everyone, and keep up the good work!
Kat
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