Hedgehog Wheel

I just couldn't leave this hedgehog cage alone. The next thing we ended up doing was making a homemade wheel and took inspiration from this video.  I will start off by saying, if I were to do a redo on this project, I would not have made a huge hole in the center, I would have left it a 5/16 hole instead.  In the video I referenced earlier, he too made some notes on what he would have changed, so I took that advice and I got hex bolts instead of carriage bolts.  Here are the supplies I ended up getting:

The Wheel:

• Plastic wash basin from Amazon

Wheel Components:

• (1) 5/16 x 3" hex bolt
• (4) 5/16 x 18 hex nuts
• (1) 5/16 x 18 wing nut
• (3) 5/16 x 1-1/2" fender washers
• (3) 1/4 x 1" hex bolts
• (3) 1/4 x 20 hex nuts
• Fidget spinner, I already had this on hand but you can find them cheap on Amazon (to remove the middle portion of the fidget spinner, simply pry it out with a flat head screwdriver, if you can't do it by hand, this is where your 5/16 x 3" hex bolt will go)
  

I bought all of my nuts/bolts/washers at Sutherlands and spent about $5, since I already had the fidget spinner, this project ended up costing me $15.00.  Now, in the video tutorial you will notice that his is on a stand made of PVC pipe.  I really liked the looks of that because you could tell it was a homemade project, and that just seemed cool to me.  We ended up forgoing the PVC pipe though and mounting it directly to the cage.  To do this, all I had to do was measure where I wanted the wheel to end up and drill a 5/16" hole on the back of the cage.

Now Teddy has all sorts of room in his 2 story condo.  I was worried that Teddy wouldn't like it, because the wash basin I bought has a slight taper to it.  Rest assured though, he loves it and was on it all night.  We had a silent spinner before, which isn't exactly silent but I will say it was more quiet than our homemade wheel.  Still I like the looks of it and it's so much easier to clean since it's all one smooth surface.  All in all, I would rather pay $15-$20 for our homemade version than the $40 store version.  This was so easy to do, if you are even thinking about trying it for yourself...you should!

It looks a little shaky here with my son spinning it, but it looks a lot more stable with Teddy on it.  We will try to update a video of him on the wheel soon!

 

More detailed video:

**Sorry for the confusion, in the video I say 5/8, I mean 5/16**

Some recent pictures of Teddy.  We tried to get him to love his dig bin by adding treats in there....he is still not a fan.