Freak Accidents

Some injuries for our furry friends are preventable.  Some even easily preventable.  These are the ones where you hear me preaching about using wood shelves instead of plastic, or wood bedding instead of carefresh.  Switch to the safe product, and sure, there's always some risk of injury, but it can be significantly less with the right product.

But... some injuries are just accidents.  Sometimes something seems fine, but there's that one person or one animal who somehow gets injured.  Sometimes unsafe items are used, without injury, for a long time!  Sometimes, those unsafe items result in injury, possibly even death.

If you've been on facebook recently, you've probably seen the article about the woman who's chinchilla got his leg caught in the bars of the ramp, had his leg amputated, and was ultimately put down.  If you haven't, it's available online here

The cage she's using is a Ferret Nation cage.  I love those cages, and so do a ton of people in the chinchilla community.  Her sad outcome from all of this doesn't make the cages unsafe... but it does make the ramps unsafe.

If you've ever talked to me about bar spacing for wire floors, you'll know that they're not inherently bad (as you might read online), but rather, that you want the space between the wire to be small enough that a leg cannot fall through.  That is not the case with the ramp bars in the FN cages.  A chinchilla can definitely get a leg through them, and when a leg falls through, sometimes they panic, and as you can see in the article... this can have major consequences.  Some people choose to cover the ramps in the FN cages, or simply not use them at all.

For me, I replace all the plastic shelves and plastic pans in there, put in wood shelves, and there's no need for the wire ramps or any plastic really.  Compare these pictures, of bare FN's (plastic pan, plastic shelf, metal rung ramp):

To these pics of some of my cages:

And I suppose you can guess for yourself which is likely safer.

This all said... still, nothing is 100% safe.  The outside bars of a ferret nation (and pretty much most cages on the market) have wide spacing.  I've actually heard stories of chins that bounce off the walls, get a leg through the outer bars, and break a leg that way.

So, then you say, ok, maybe smaller bar spacing is better!  They can't get a leg through!

No, they can't get a leg through... but again, nothing is 100% safe.

Below is a picture, looking from top down (so basically, the chin is upside down), of a chin that somehow hooked it's teeth in 1 x 1/2" bar spacing (yes, he passed).  When they hook their teeth in such a manner, they panic and thrash around to get free.  They almost always break their neck (I know of one instance where the chin got itself off the bars... but pulled out it's front teeth by the roots [at another breeder's ranch]... it was put down), and thankfully, it's usually almost an instant, painless death.  But see, nothing is completely 100000% safe.

This, and heck, even the chin getting a foot caught on the side of the cage... these are freak accidents.  Do these type of accidents mean these cages are unsafe?  No.  Some things, there's just no way to prevent, which is why we do our best to prevent the things that CAN be easily prevented... so there's less losses all together.  RIP my sweet white sapphire boy.