Monday, August 1, 2011

C&C Cage Danger Alert

By Bob Matthews


In recent times, C&C (Cubes and Coroplast) cages have grown continuously in popularity and have taken over a serious slice of the small animal pet habitat market. A fast Google search will show many web sites that now offer directions for do-it-yourself basic C&C cages. In addition, a number of C&C cage stores have sprung up online and offer C&C cages in kit form. The most important reasons for the increasing popularity of this cage technology is that 1) very large cages are available - typically much larger than those sold in pet stores and 2) C&C cages are comparatively inexpensive. By virtue of these factors "the purchaser can get plenty of cage for the money. Nonetheless as the old proviso goes: Let the buyer beware. There is one major potential danger the responsible pet owner must watch for when buying or building their very own C&C cage.



As I discussed before, a few sites offer directions on building simple, basic C&C cages. A lot of them also list sources for materials. 1 or 2 nationwide department store chains are recommended as sources for metal grids. The problem is that a lot of this info is now several years old and some of the grid sources have changed their products.

Not many years ago, one of the nation's dep. store chains was a great spot to buy grids for C&C cages. They were available as cube or shelving unit kits. The kits contained both the metal grids and plastic connectors used to fasten them together. The square grids were 14-inches on each side and were laid out in a 9-space by 9-space grid. Thus, each opening was roughly 1.5 inches square. And these girds made absolutely wonderful cages.

As the economy took a turn for the worse, the company had this product reworked in order to take material out of it and save cost. The new product now contained grids that had only 8 spaces per side. Thus, each space was just a little bigger - only around a 5th of an inch. No big deal if you were building a shelf to hold stuffed animals, comics or your hat collection from Sweden. However , that fifth of an inch was a very large deal to C&C cage builders and owners.

Just after the design change, guinea pig rescue organizations began receiving reports of guinea pig strangulation deaths. Some of the associations started issuing cautions to avoid 8x8 grids and only use 9x9 grids. Several also made contact with C&C cage stores with the same caution. In reality it was through contact with these organizations that our company first heard of this issue.

After deciding on the C&C technology, you'll have 2 choices in obtaining your cage. You can design and build your cage from nothing out of grids, corrugated plastic and other hardware that you buy yourself. Or you can order your cage in kit form and build it with the directions and materials provided. Either way, be absolutely sure to use only grids with spacing of 1.5 inches or smaller. When using 14-inch grids, be sure to use only 9x9 girds and definitely avoid 8x8 grids.




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