Ferplast Furet XL Cage

...looks airy and the grey ferplast shelves match nicely. I have three in this colour.

Size:
It really is huge! the biggest cage I've had for rats, except an avairy. The height is a little taller than most conventional rat cages but it really is a lot wider and deeper than most. WxDxH = 75cm x 80cm x 85cm (aprox.) It's big enough for up to 9 rats but I prefer to keep it to about 4-6 so they have lots of space.It's size means it ...
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Accessories:
Ferplast make excellent accessories. They are a great size, excellent quality and easy to clean, mostly. The cage comes with a couple of shelves, a ramp and some tubes. The shelves are very sturdy and don't flex when heavy boys stand on the edge like other brand shelves do, however, they have ridges (for grip I assume) which can make cleaning a pain. Being so big you can get lots of nice accessories in your XL, but ... more

I currently have 3 of these cages, 2 in use and one for spare, I also intend to get one more.

There are lots of good things about the cage and not much in the way of disadvantages.

Appearance:
Unlike most pet cages, this one comes in 3 different colour varieties. Red base and (I think) yellow bars, Green base, with dark blue bars and more recently White/light grey base with blue/turquiose bars. It's a matter of opinion really as to which is nicest. I like the white and turquoise the best myself as it looks airy and the grey ferplast shelves match nicely. I have three in this colour.

Size:
It really is huge! the biggest cage I've had for rats, except an avairy. The height is a little taller than most conventional rat cages but it really is a lot wider and deeper than most. WxDxH = 75cm x 80cm x 85cm (aprox.) It's big enough for up to 9 rats but I prefer to keep it to about 4-6 so they have lots of space.It's size means it is great for the rats but not so good if you're only small like me. It's not easy to lug it about at all. However it does disassemble. It's even tough to drag about so I'm planning to put mine on castors at some point.

Accessories:
Ferplast make excellent accessories. They are a great size, excellent quality and easy to clean, mostly. The cage comes with a couple of shelves, a ramp and some tubes. The shelves are very sturdy and don't flex when heavy boys stand on the edge like other brand shelves do, however, they have ridges (for grip I assume) which can make cleaning a pain. Being so big you can get lots of nice accessories in your XL, but hammocks need to be huge to go right the way across.

Bars.
The bars of the XL are coated, which makes them wipe clean. This is great. The ferplast Jenny had chrome bars which would turn dark or rust so this is a big improvement, well done Ferplast! They are also more widely spaced than most cages (1.5cm for the XL) which allows you to give ratties a little stroke or tickle through the bars. Though the bars aren't so widely spaced that kittens or young does can wriggle out!

Access:
This is the one bad thing about this cage.Saying that, if you arrange the cage with a lot of thought, it's not so bad. If you want to stack one cage ontop of the other, like the XL Tower, the access it a real pain the the neck. The door on front/side it just too low down. It's really hard to reach some corners for cleaning or getting to reluctant rats! It also means the top cage's top door is so high up you can't reach down into that door either. I guess it's just better to have them side by side, but you do need a lot of space to be able to do this, plus they look pretty good one upon the other.

Price:
Not too bad compared to a Jenny, which can cost up to £89.99, with all of it's faults. Do shop around when buying cages, the XL can vary from £90-£130+ so check as many shops/websites as you can. I picked mine up second hand for about £60-70 each, but in great condition.

Ease of assembly:
It's somewhat unusual for a standard cage (as opposed to an aviary) to disassemble. It's lucky that the XL does, it only just fits through my doorways with about 1cm to spare, so you have to watch your fingers. The fact that is can be taken apart means it's easier to do a good clean in the garden or bath, it's easier to transport, and it's great to store as a big spare cage. Putting it together is hard if you buy it brand new, you find yourself with lots of clips and bits. Once you've established what they're for and where they go, you're well on your way. Thankfully my first XL was second hand so I got a demonstration of how to assemble it. Once you've done it you won't have a problem doing it again, it's just the initial putting it together and you don't get any instructions. If you can find a large picture of it you can work out where bits go from that. Or ask someone else!

Summary
Ferplast have really thought about this cage and have brought together great bits from all their other cages. I'd give it 4.5/5 but as I could only pick 4 or 5 I went for 5/5 as the accessibility isn't great but if you rearrange the cage and don't have anything on top it should be okay. 

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