A hammock at every level: what a mink study reveals about multilevel cages
Published by Planète Pets · managing editor: Clément Lacaille · how our guides are written
A multilevel cage multiplies the chances to jump from one tier to another, often quickly and without much precision. A study in farmed mink, a mustelid close to the ferret and also housed in multilevel wire cages, sheds light on a concrete risk of that setup: the tail striking the wire mesh in passing. Find our full accessory picks in the ferret accessories section.
Contents · 4 sections
The study
Heimberg, Jespersen and Moe published a study in 2018 in the journal Animals, covering 600 mink across three farms, comparing multilevel cages fitted or not with an additional hammock — 300 animals in each group (see the study). The authors’ reasoning: a mink jumping straight from an upper level toward the nest box picks up speed and strikes the wire mesh along the way, a repeated impact that damages the tail tip; an interposed hammock is meant to slow that transition down. Mink housed without a hammock showed more tail tip lesions than those with a hammock in their multilevel cage.
Why this result also applies to a ferret cage
This study doesn’t cover the domestic ferret, and a farmed mink’s nest box isn’t identical to a shelf-cage hammock. But the principle it isolates — an animal picking up speed while jumping between two wire-mesh levels, with a risk of impact along the way — shows up unchanged in a multilevel ferret cage, where jumps between shelves are frequent in an agile adult animal. A ferret and a farmed mink share the same genus, Mustela, and a comparable tail anatomy, which makes the transposition reasonable without being directly demonstrated in ferrets.
In practice, in a multilevel cage
- One hammock isn’t enough if it’s only installed at a single level: favor an anchor point at each major height transition, not just under the top shelf.
- Check that the hammock stays properly taut and doesn’t swing against the wire, which would cancel out its cushioning role.
- Add ramps or intermediate shelves rather than relying on jumps alone, as detailed in our guide on DIY shelving for a multilevel cage.
- Check the tail tip regularly — scabbing, swelling, missing fur — especially in a cage with several levels and no hammock in between.
Frequently asked questions
Is one hammock enough for a three-level cage?
The study covers adding a hammock to a multilevel setup without specifying an optimal number per level; a cushioning point at each major transition remains the more cautious approach.
Is mink a good model for the ferret?
Both are closely related mustelids, housed under similar caging principles, which makes enrichment findings reasonably transposable, though not a certainty.
Is this kind of injury serious in ferrets?
Nothing in this study can confirm that in ferrets; any tail injury that doesn’t heal quickly deserves a veterinary opinion. Find all our guides on the ferret hub.
An accessory from our shop for this use: Double-layer plush hammock for rats, squirrels or ferrets (€18.90) · the whole shop
An accessory from our shop for this use: Rolling 4-level ferret and chinchilla cage with hammock ($159.90, ships from the US) · the US shop
This guide is part of Planète Pets’s Ferrets universe. Our advice is general in nature: for any health concern, your veterinarian remains the only reference.
