This setup proves that you don’t need to spend money to have a cute cage setup! The wheel, bendy bridge, waterbottle, food bowls and chew toys are the only store bought items in this cage setup! If you’re interested in the basic idea for this setup, here you can learn how to easily recreate it yourself!

• First empty everything from the cage (sorry I didn’t get a before pic!).
• Sweep the bottom out, clean it well with a petsafe cleaner.

• After drying the interior, dump in a solid 6 inches of substrate, smooth it out.
• Next add in the wheel, move the substrate as nessesary so it fits.

• Angle the wheel slightly for fashion, and put the watering station next to it, by doing this the pet will have easy access to water while working out. Beanie has a bowl and bottle with a large flat rock to keep her claws trim, but that’s just personal preference.

• To create an underground tunnel and nest I used 2 Pringle-can tubes and a hamster-sized purple igloo.
• Dig up half the substrate and install the tunnels and igloo, put some shredded tissue inside the igloo as nesting materal.
• Cover the tunnels in the substrate.

I ended up adding in a second burrow-starting tube, but it’s not visible.

• Next add in a food bowl. Personally I scatterfeed, but I like having foodbowls with a little food and a chew in them.
• Put the bowl near the wheel.

• Add a large hidey house. I’m using my Three-Story House I made recently.
• Put it in the opposing corner from the wheel.

• Since the house is so high I added some wooden stairs of the side, and I think they look pretty great! The wood pieces were DIYed.

• Then leading down from the roof of the house I added my bendy bridge, which was too short, so I added some more wooden pieces for stairs.

• Then I added a cute Terra Cotta Pot Saucer food dish, just because I think it’s cute.
• Remember, always go by personal preferance when setting up your cage, some people may hate Terra Cotta Pot Saucers, only personally, I love em.

• Hamsters don’t like open spaces, so I added in some more DIYs to take up the empty space, both these DIYs will soon be available on the blog 🙂
• Cardboard DIY available here!
• Popsicle Stick DIY Unavailable.

• Next I added in my chew toys. Here I have a carved apple stick, walnut, ratton ball and a carrot crunch chew (I am now aware these coloured chews are known to colour feces, and I’m no longer using them).
• Stick the chews around the cage.
• Never put walnuts in dishes! They make the worst noise that will keep you up all night, trust me, I know!

• And finally I put Beanie’s food out, and the setup’s done!
• I added Beanie, and called it a day.

Beanie explored her new setup, and I think she’s enjoying it a lot!

I know many people think hamsters can live happily in tiny cages, but I would never have seen Beanie enjoy exploring and burrowing if I hadn’t upgraded her to a 690 square inch bincage with enough substrate to properly burrow. So if your small pet is currently in a tiny cage, I just want to say there is nothing as rewarding as seeing your pet happily exploring and burrowing, so really consider that upgrade 😉

If you’re interested in more hamster-related content be sure to like this post and follow the blog, and I’ll be back on Tuesday with more small pet care, DIYs, recipes, cage setups, stories and more, have a ham-tastic day!