# Bar spacing



## nyan_jai (Mar 19, 2016)

I'm a bit puzzled in regards to what bar spacing is appropriate for mice. I see people saying that 1cm is too large, but others using cages with 1cm bar spacing such as freddy, zelos and jenny with no issue.


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## Laigaie (Mar 7, 2011)

Like most things, it depends.

Bigger mice can tolerate larger bar spacing. Mice vary in size from 25g to over 100g, so that's a huge difference just in adult mice. Most pet mice are going to be on the smaller end of that, though, so what works for someone with bigger mice might not work out well if you've got smaller ones.

Crossbar spacing is important, too. If the bars are mostly all in one direction, with hardly any going in the other direction, mice can and will warp the bars in order to fit through. When the bars are a thicker gauge wire, that's harder to do, and harder still when there are a lot of crossbars. Mesh of the same spacing will be much harder for a mouse to squish through than just bars.

And in my opinion most importantly, you won't know what's not working until a mouse is escaped, dead, or in serious peril. If a mouse can just barely manage to squish out their skulls, they'll get stuck in the bars. Mice have been known to kill themselves in trying to squish through bars, occasionally by trying to squish back through a different pair of bars. And this happens really quickly. I can think of only once that someone's said they were able to catch the mouse who'd gotten her head stuck (in this case a chewed-out hole, not bars) before the mouse perished. So, basically, it may look like something's working for a while, only for it to end in tragedy.

Suffice to say, I really really don't like bar cages.


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## WoodWitch (Oct 18, 2009)

Laigaie said:


> Suffice to say, I really really don't like bar cages.


....all that Laigaie says, and in addition, I think that bars encourage bitey behaviour in mice.


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