gmorning ptamom
and ty. Oh I bet they are much happier now lol
Are you in the closet with them? or just letting them go in the closet to play?
When they were in the travel cage, free time out of the cage was probably very enjoyable to them and allowed them to spend some pent up energy before bed time.
But now with their regular cage there, if it's just the gliders in the closet by themselves, I wouldn't bother with free time out of the cage. Here's why.
To me it's not much different than being in the cage, but unless you have a see through door or are in there with them you can't really watch them and be sure they are ok.
If the cage is set up to be stimulating and enriching with a safe wheel, toys etc... they have just as much fun in there as they would outside the cage in another space. Then you are only cleaning up one thing instead of two spaces for them.
When we first got this trailer I was sooooo excited because it is contained and I could safely let the gliders out in the living room to play and roam. That lasted about a month
Even though I knew they couldn't get outside it stressed me out so bad that they would get up in the furniture or something stupid would happen that I hadn't thought of until they were out running around.
The few times I did turn them loose they ran around for about 20 minutes mostly visiting the other cages then returned to their own cage, climbed up and went in the pouch.
I don't know maybe my gliders are weird but they are more content and have more to do in the cage than out of it. If they are out of the cage, it's to spend time with me.
I know a lot of people have a whole room dedicated to their gliders set up like playgrounds. And yeh I can see how that is enriching and all that, but if your not interacting with them in those spaces it just seems counter productive to me.
The other BIG thing for me is this. I've worked on a lot of other peoples medical issues.
The more spaces, the more toys, the more freedom.... the more things and variables you have to look at when something is wrong with a glider.
All of that can make it harder to figure out the root cause of what happened and how it happened to prevent it from happening again.
Because of that, I don't change my routine much, that includes cleaning products, laundry soaps etc.. if i make a change I try to write it down with a date so if something does happen i can start building a time line of the when I changed the routine or products.
I prefer to limit the space they use to keep all that to a minimum as well. The cage alone can take a couple hours to inspect for issues if you are doing a thorough job of it. A whole room omg
The belly rubs.. personally i think it depends on the gliders. Cocoa is a very confident glider and often sleeps on her back, her Daughter is also pretty confident she has always enjoyed chin rubs that lead to full on belly rubs since she was a tiny joey. The boys are following the girls lead in this cage. This is the only cage i can do it with while they are awake, it's easier when they are asleep.
When you sit with their sleep pouch in your lap and let them really relax and go back to sleep you can usually coax them to let you rub their bellies, but you have to sit still, and do it slowly.