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The Guinea Pig House A Look at the Living Environment

Q:How Did You Make Your Piggie Environment?
Lot's of people have asked about how we built the OinkerNet Habitat. Actually they ask how we built "the cage", but we hate to think of their environment as a cage. We have tried to create as cool a place as possible for them to live in. Of course they are now spoiled rotten and could never go back to the tiny boxes we found them in.

The Overall Layout
The base layout is a 4 x 8 foot sheet of 3/4 inch plywood. The sides do not need to be very high. Guinea Pigs are great jumpers, but they have their limits. We made our sides 18 inches high. Half inch plywood was used on the sides and ends. The first six inches around the whole enclosure inside is the full running track. We believe in exercise for Oinkers and try to let them "Go Run" as much as possible. The bottom of the habitat was easy. We went to a local flooring store and purchased a 5 x 9 foot chunk of linoleum flooring material. It's a logical choice when you consider how durable (and waterproof) it is. 5 x 9 gave us an additional 6 inches to run up the sides all the way around. The interior condos are the most complicated part. We used a 12 x 12 inch portion of each condo to be storage compartments. Food on one end and shavings on the other. The roofs for each condo were attached with large piano hinges and cover the storage, downstairs main entry and sleeping compartments. The condo entrances were cut out with a jigsaw and there are PVC pipe ramps inside up to the sleeping loft over the main entrance. The Oinkers were aprehensive at first to use the ramps. Once they were shown how though, they took to it naturally. For them, it's just another cave to explore.

We will try to include more detailed drawings of the condos as time permits. Hope you have as much fun making your Piggie Habitat as we did!

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