I meant DIY... duh O.o
So I made a great rack for rat breeding out of one of those premade storage drawer things you can get at Walmart. I got mine at Bed Bath and Beyond for 19 dollars. You'll also need 1/2" (or 1/4" if you want to put mice in it) hardware cloth /wire mesh, and some small wire ties.
You'll also want to have wire cutters for cutting the mesh. and a pair of needle nose pliers comes in very handy.
I started by taking out all the drawers and turning the entire unit upside down. In this pic you can see that I also melted holes and inserted wire ties to tie down the mesh. I found out later that it's easier to insert the wire ties after the mesh is fitted.
Measure a piece of mesh to fit around the legs.
Be sure to leave enough overlap on the edges to fold over.
Fold down the edges of the mesh and wire tie them tightly in place.
Repeat on second layer. This is what it looks like right side up. The unit I bought had a hard top which fit snugly so I didn't need to mesh the top drawer. If yours has a plastic top you'll probably need to mesh it to keep them from chewing out.
Here I inserted one drawer to show what it looks like. You can put food on top of the mesh between drawers because of the units design, if this is something you want to be able to do then make sure you get one with enough space.
This the inside of the top drawer. It important the drawers fit snugly enough that your rodents can't chew on the sides of the drawers. Also be sure to melt/drill enough holes for ventilation, you don't want humidity to build up inside. Also note that you can see the mesh of the next drawer down in the background, if it wasn't meshed the rats would be sneaking out the back now that you've got a drawer open.
And the finished product. I decided to mount the water bottles on the side, they act as stoppers to keep the drawers from coming out all the way.
This units drawers measure about 15"Wx21"Lx7"H about the same as a large tub but without all the extra height and is good for one female rat and a large litter. You could keep more in each drawer but once the babies start growing it gets crowded fast.
Heres a pic of a 60qt tub for comparison.
This is a great way to turn drawers into a breeder rack. It keeps the rats from sneaking out the back when you open a upper drawer, and keeps them from chewing on the sides of the drawers. Additionally, the mesh makes the drawers very snug and there is no worry of them pushing them open from the inside.
Hope you like! cheers!!
Mistake!! at first I had the bottles mounted on front but as you can see they blocked opening the upper drawers. Side mounting works much better.
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