Tips For Setting Up Midwest Guinea Pig Cages

Tips For Setting Up Midwest Guinea Pig Cages is a post that contains affiliate links. 

Midwest Guinea pig cages are a popular way to house cavys indoors. When it comes to Guinea pig habitats Midwest makes some great options that go well with fleece bedding!

They can be a little bit of a pain to set up so I’m sharing my tips for setting up Midwest Guinea pig cages to help.

Why use Midwest Guinea pig cages?

So before I tell you how to make the process simple I want to share with you a little bit of the “why” for us when it comes to using Midwest cages.

Midwest makes Guinea pig cages that are open and spacious and relatively inexpensive for the space they provide. We don’t have free roaming Guinea pigs in this house. I take them outdoors in playpens and they have spacious habitats but they don’t run free in the house. We’ve never had amazing luck litter training them so droppings are a mess and quite frankly, the dogs are a little too big for anything that small, even just tripping over them could be detrimental!

Midwest Guinea pig cages are also really easy to set up for fleece bedding. You know we love using fleece bedding with our Guinea pigs! It’s easy to keep clean, they love it, and it’s colorful and fun, not to mention better for the environment and economical.

Where can I buy Midwest Guinea pig cages?

I’ve purchased Midwest cages online through Amazon, I’ll include those links below, and I’ve purchased them secondhand. We have a few of them and they’re great for multiple piggies! Because cavys love living in pairs or groups we needed a solution for housing them that was spacious enough to accommodate two or three Guinea pigs at once.

• Midwest Guinea Pig Habitat With Top
• Midwest Canvas Bottom
• Midwest Divider Panel with Ramp
• Midwest Guinea Pig Habitat
• Midwest Top Panel

Do I need the top panel for my Midwest Guinea pig cage?

It depends what your situation is with other pets in the home. If you have dogs or cats that don’t like small animals I would definitely recommend the top panel for your Midwest Guinea pig habitats.

We don’t use them with a top panel. Our dogs know they can’t go in there and Guinea pigs can’t climb or jump out of the Midwest cages. It’s nice to be able to just purchase the regular habitat and then we get to spend the extra money we save on spoiling the piggies with treats, toys, etc.

Tips For Setting Up Midwest Guinea Pig Cages

Okay let’s dig in to my tips for setting up Midwest Guinea pig habitats!

Be Patient

It’s not a fast process. Sure it’s not Swedish furniture or anything but it does take some time. So prepare to be a little frustrated and set some time aside to put the cages together!

The Vinyl Goes Inside The Cage

I don’t know why, but the first time I put mine together I was baffled by this and it was driving me crazy. The vinyl bottom goes inside the cage the whole way around. Don’t worry. My piggies never chewed on it and it’s still in great shape after years of use.

Unhook All The Velcro Straps

Undo all the Velcro straps around the bottom and put the bottom piece under the cage wire. It helps keep everything in place and this way you can strap everything down once it’s situated the whole way around.

Hook The Corners First

This is my special trick…which is not really a trick. Once I put a whole habitat together and had to undo all the velcro straps to move them over because I screwed something up along the way. Hooking the corners first gets everything roughy square and then you don’t have as much room for error.

Double Check

Double and triple check that the Midwest Guinea pig cage portion is not upside down in any of the panels. One of mine was flipped when I put them together this last time and it threw me for a loop. I couldn’t hook the velcro straps because the bars are not evenly spaced from top to bottom! There is a top and bottom and it has to be right or they won’t strap to the base properly.

Prepare To Readjust

Once you have them all strapped and fastened…be prepared to move them over one space in either direction. It’s a pain but a nice even fit will make sure that the cage is square and the base is tight. No temptation for those piggies to chew!!

Add In Your Fleece Bedding!

Check out how we set up our cages really quickly and easily for fleece bedding! If you are on the fence about using it, try it out! I love that it is so quick and easy with the size and shape of the Midwest Guinea pig habitats and it saves me so much money on bedding!

Remember:

You can configure the cages so that the ramps are wherever you want them to be. If you are connecting more than one of the Midwest Guinea pig habitats together this is super helpful! I put them on the ends and on the sides of alternate cages so I can connect them!

Screaming a little helps. I only did it twice today while I was setting them up for the first time in about a year! It’s worth it once they’re all strapped together and looking great. It’s an annoying process though and I’m the first to admit it. As much as I love these habitats all those little velcro straps give me serious rage 🙂

Get a water bottle with a longer spout. Some of our water bottles have short spouts as I’ve discovered. The ones with longer and more angled spouts will work better in these cages so they can poke into the cage further and the piggies can reach them better!