Product Reviews - Savic Freddy 2
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Review 1 of 3
Place Purchased: PAH
Price: £70
Score: 8/10
It is a rat cage and comes with one very simple corner shelf, a plastic walkway to allow access to the shelf and a hammock. Also had a litter tray, a large water bottle but no clip to secure it (hopefully just mine) and a metal bowl which hangs on the bars.
I now have two of these cages much to my partner’s disgust having spent £140 on mouse cages. The mice love it and I have to admit now they are full of all they could want and I have to clean only 2 rather than 5 cages for the girls I am very very happy
Pros
Value for money considering it only costs approx £20 more than the ½ height little brother the Ruffy2
1cm spacing, not one escape with 18 mice.
Horizontal bars make for great climbing
Bars well coated and unlikely to rust unlike the Jenny.
Large centre door allows easy cleaning, and the deep base can be used as a washing up bowl as there is little chance this fits in your bath for a shower.
Deep base allows burrowing and means most litter contained.
Large door opens down like a ladder for more nervous mice to walk out on their own terms.
Carry handles make what is a heavy large object fairly easy to handle.
Most importantly. The mice have a ball!
Cons
It is very hard to fill the dead space in the middle and prevent large drops as there is a large centre door preventing anything being hung front to back in the middle and there is such a large distance side to side that you would need something far larger than a tee towel.
The single shelf is very small and therefore it can be costly filling the rest of the cage. I made more shelves from plastic sign board. I think more shelves are needed.
The shelf cannot be placed very far up the cage, as the walk way would be at too steep an angle for the mice to climb
The shelf is hard to clean as it has little ridges in which are deep enough to allow bits you are cleaning off to cling to
Such a large cost, especially at one time, example would be 4 girls each in Pennines (hamster or rat) equals 12 homed for £60, where as this homes approx 10 for £70. The time and ease of cleaning far far less cages is worth it for me, but maybe not for all especially those with the will power to clean one daily!
Second top door would be of use…. If only to stop a mass exodus when you try to put their food in.
When working alone there is not enough arm reach to attach things you have to hold in place on the inside and attach from the outside. My wheels will stay in place luckily whilst I then secure them outside…..main issue was with a tee towel, the mice climbing on it and my arm on the inside before I could get around and clothes peg it on the outside.
It can be hard to remove one mouse with ease….be sure to plan ahead for vet appointments. We all know they know where we are taking them and even the most tame mouse can make a habit of being very hard to get hold of in an area this large
Reviewer: KJD
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Review 2 of 3
Place Purchased: Pets at home
Price: £70
Score: 9.5/10
I have now had this cage for 3 weeks, during which I went through 2 complete cage cleans and 3 different setups, and I am thrilled with it.
When I bought it, the cage came with a hammock, a platform, a ramp to attach to the plaform, a metal ‘coop cup’ style feeding bowl, and a huge water bottle with a plastic clip and metal wire to attach it to the cage.
Pros:
The cage is very well constructed and I would say it’s practically escape-proof. The base is made of thick plastic; the bars are sturdy and have a spacing of 9.5mm; the support bars (perpendicular to the 9.5mm spaced bars) are 8cm apart, so there’s very little give in the bars; there are no large gaps anywhere (unlike the infamous Cambridge); and the door closes with a proper locking mechanism so no amount of shoving from inside could open it, short of actually breaking the door.
The coating on the bars is fairly tough and has withstood my bashing it about admirably, although if your mice are determined gnawers, I don’t think this coating will stop them, but then again neither will any other!
There are 2 handles attached to the top of the cage, which make carrying it much easier. I can carry the cage by myself, despite being 5′4″, and often move it from the lounge to the study or vice versa so my mice can be wherever I am. This is a small feature, and easy to overlook, but I’m very grateful for it and make use of it daily.
The cage base is very deep at 16cm, so I can give my mice a nice, deep layer of litter and still run no risk of them kicking it out of the cage. Even if my mice wanted to intentionally fling litter out of the cage, they would still have to carry it from the cage floor up to a higher level before they could fling it through the bars as the base is just that deep.
Despite the fact that the cage is huge, I’ve had no trouble filling the space and making it safe and accessible. Large teatowels will easily span the width and even the length of the cage, especially once you add in the extra length from a couple loops of webbing and a couple paperclips to attach them with. (I got my teatowels from Primark, and found that they were just smaller than the footprint of the cage - perfect.)
Finally, my mice love it! I think the cage is the perfect size: still small enough to happily fit into even smallish flats, but large enough to provide mice with more toys than they know what to do with, loads of nesting sites, and plenty of room to roam.
Cons:
The Freddy 2 doesn’t flatpack, so it makes transporting and washing it difficult. It wouldn’t fit properly in any but the widest tubs and the largest shower stalls, so I tend to soak myself and the bathroom floor somewhat when I wash it.
There are quite large ridges on the platform, which make it a bit of a pain to clean as the ridges create traps for debris, making it difficult to wipe the debris off the platform.
The depth of the base can actually be a problem when housing rodents as small as mice, since they aren’t usually tall enough to reach up to the bars above, and things like platforms, hammocks, and wheels will be at least that high up. However, this problem is easily solved with tissue boxes, wooden climbing toys, ladders, and the like.
The plastic clip that came with the water bottle isn’t actually strong enough to hold it up when it’s full - the bottle just falls through the gap in the clip - so I now just use the metal wire that also came with the bottle. This isn’t a con as such, but it makes me wonder why they bother providing the clip at all.
There’s only one door at the front. It is quite large, and I can reach all parts of the cage despite my short stature, but I still have to get help whenever I have to hold something still inside the cage and fiddle with an attachment on the outside, e.g. with platforms. I’m not sure what the solution would be, though, as a larger door, or more doors, would subtract still further from the usable cage space - you can’t attach hammocks or toys to doors unless you have no intention of opening them. So perhaps this con is really just Savic making the best possible compromise between having good access and having sufficient space to hang things from.
Overall:
I love this cage and would definitely buy it again and recommend it to others. I think it delivers value for money, despite the £70 price tag, as it’s both well made and well designed, not to mention huge!
Reviewer: Cub
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Review 3 of 3
Place Purchased: Pets at home
Price: £72.99
Score: 10/10
A brilliant cage for mice. Great height and foot print with lots of space to add toys and hang hammocks. Access is great with the large door at the front, enabling you to reach all areas of the cage. Easy cage to keep clean and my girls love the space they have in there.
Reviewer: Mousemommy
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