I recently started searching for a new cage for our pair of Sugar Gliders. Sugar Gliders are exotic pets and have particular needs. They are small, arboreal, jumping, social animals and need a lot of space compared to their size. With that in mind, I was looking for a large cage to give them plenty of room.
Beyond size (the bigger the cage the better, with no upper bound), the various glider forums had lots of advice, caveats, and anecdotes. The main concern is whether the cage is glider-safe. Are the gaps 1/2" or less? Does the cage door securely fasten? What material is it made from? Are the bars coated/painted?
It turns out that the material and coating is very important. Most small animal cages are made of wire that is welded into a mesh and then coated. Some are galvanized (coated with zinc); some are painted; some are coated with PVC; some are powder coated; some have some combination of the above.
Galvanized is not good becasue the zinc rubs off onto the gliders as their travel around the cage. When gliders groom themselves and each other they will ingest small amounts of zinc. Well, zinc is bad for gliders. In a galvanized cage, gliders will soon ingest enough zinc to cause them real problems. Paint can flake and be ingested causing a whole other set of problems. PVC coated seemed ideal.
But then there were a lot of gliders that were getting sick and no one could figure out why. The only thing they appeared to have in common is that they were all housed in PVC coated cages.
Unfortunately, it wasn't that clear cut. They were a lot of gliders in PVC cages (PVC was in vogue remember) that were doing just fine. What about the raw material, the cage mesh? Did it all come from the same supplier? Nope. A lot of concerned people asked a lot of good questions but nobody could come up with the answer. The result was that PVC went seriously out of vogue. Some cage suppliers and manufacturers kept right on selling PVC coated cages for sugar gliders. Some didn't.
Martin's Cages is one of the ones that stopped selling PVC cages for gliders. As I understand the story, as soon as Martin's Cages found that all PVC was at risk, they stopped selling PVC cages for sugar gliders. To me, that fact alone said a lot of good things about Martin’s.
For my comparison shopping purposes, I set up a spreadsheet comparing the cages I was looking at from a variety of manufacturers. One of the columns I calculated was price per unit volume. The cages I looked at had values from ~$7/ft3 to ~$16/ft3 with Martin’s being on the lower end of the scale at ~$9/ft3. Digging a little deeper, I don’t know that I trust the … “better value” cages.
I actually bought one of Martin’s cages (the big one) and had to return it. It was too big to get through the door for cleaning. Assembly takes some time, ~3 hours for the monster I bought and the result was a lot stronger than I had anticipated before the build. Follow their tips, use a few zip ties, and buy the crimping tool. Return was no hassle.
Martin’s cages are hand-made, powder-coated wire mesh cages (powder-coating is in vogue for gliders now). They are purpose built for small animals. They have several product lines specialized for different animals. They are not bird cages that are rebranded for small animals. As a result, the cages are very functional but they are not really pieces of furniture for display on their own. If you are handy, you can do a lot of customization and modification yourself and Martin’s sells the parts and tools. If you’d rather have Martin’s do the work, they build custom cages as well. Surprisingly for custom work, the pricing is right in line with the rest of their products. That is, they don’t gouge you for custom work.
Other cages, including most bird cages, use longer vertical bars. Young gliders need bars that are close spaced vertically. Long vertical bars aren’t real good because young animals slide down the vertical bars. Martin’s uses a mesh size that would be baby friendly.
Martin’s Cages is Mom’n’Pop operation, just not a small Mom’n’Pop operation. When I was discussing a custom I ended up talking to Skip Martin, the owner. He was very informative and fun to talk to. He told me it was a 100% American operation, even the wire mesh manufacture. The more I talked to him, the more I realized the size of the operation. And the guy in charge was taking the time to talk to me, a mere customer. That friendliness and openness was echo’ed by everyone I talked to there.
My only complaint is that some of the items in web-store are difficult to understand. It took a phone call to find what I was looking for. I mentioned that to them and said they knew it already and were working on it.
Summary:
The good: economical, very functional, low weight for the size, glider safe, young glider friendly, good variety, customizable, custom available.
The bad: not “pretty”, only in black, difficult web-store
If you are looking for a small animal cage, Martin’s Cages is definitely worth a visit.
--jerry