My girlfriend has two chinchillas that she loves to death. At least once a week she lets them out of the cage to run around and get some exercise. When they're in their cage they can use their exercise wheel, but despite the label on the box claiming that this 12" (~ 30 cm) exercise wheel is for chinchillas, it's way too small. What's worse still is there doesn't seem to be anyone out there mass-producing exercise wheels larger than this. So I made my own.
I used a large feeding bucket and I attached it to a lazy susan. Then I roughed up the inside so that they would have something to grip to. Finally I attached it to the cage. Not a terribly complicated procedure at all.
At first I wasn't sure it would work out, since the surface to run on isn't level, paired with the fact that even with the roughed up edge it still wasn't all that grippy. After a week of the new wheel being installed, they finally figured it out and it's much better.
On the old wheel, it was so small that they would have to arch their back to get it going. It looked cramped and uncomfortable. They also couldn't move all that quickly since there's not enough space to really get moving. With the new wheel, they can really run. Today we saw one of them spend more time on the new wheel in one sitting than he ever has on the old one. My guess is that it's less painful to use with all that extra space.
Even though the chinchillas seem happy with the new wheel, I'd like to angle it so that the bottom of the wheel is level. I also have to figure out how to provide them more grip. But for now, it's still a great improvement over that dinky wheel we replaced.
Again, video of old wheel: link
video of new wheel: link
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/b9zu1s/chinchilla_exercise_wheels_are_too_small_so_i/
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