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Comparison of Wire Dog Crates on the Market
Author: Vebo Pet Supplies Date Posted:27 March 2017
One question we get asked a lot is how do our wire crates compared to the ones on the market. This is actually rather diffcult to answer, because there are no industry standards (besides the length I guess). We have noticed different brands can have slightly different widths, wire gauge, bar spacing etc. Plus any online discount stores will import their own, put their own sticker on it and called it a different brand. There are so many "brands" out there, we would really have to look at the specs one-by-one in order to answer the question.
So we are going to do a quick research and compare a few for you.
(1) 42" Dog Crate from a popular online bargain store
At the time of writing this post, this is one of the first ads we see when we search for dog crates on Google. $75 for a 42" wire crate at about $35 less than ours. The dimensions are somewhat similar but the height is about 2cm shorter. The price is very tempting and it definitely looks like a bargain, right?
Let's now look at the weight. It says 11.5kg then we look at ours, 21kg. We seriously can't imagine how we can shed 10kg off a steel crate. Yes it's possible if it is made of expensive metal such as aluminium, titanium or graphite, but you would have to add another zero to the price to do that, so our guess is the wiring needs to be a LOT thiner in order for this to weight 10kg less. This is actually worse value than ours if you are paying by the kilo.
(2) 48" Dog Crate on eBay
Now let's take a look on eBay, a very popular shopping site. This particualr seller sells anything from massage tables to office furniture, they also have a 48" wire crate for $98. It's about 2.5cm wider than our crate but $35 cheaper and free postage. Once again the pricing and free postage are very tempting. Now let's look at the weight, this one weights 16.1kg, ours weight 25kg. Slight improvement over the last one, but it's still a whole 9kg lighter. Have you held a 9kg fitness dumbell before? It's big. Now that's how much metal they have to shed to get down to that weight. We have been selling crates for over 10 years, most dogs are fine and never broke our crates. But we have also seen a few dogs with thunder storm issues who broke our crates, so it does happen and we would never use wiring any thinner. It's defnitely cheaper but you would be taking a chance here with the thinner wiring.
(3) 48" Midwest "Life Stages" Dog Crate
We look at a more established pet brand Midwest and its LifeStages range. Finally, their weight is approx 24kg so it is on par with what we have, dimesnsions are also about identical, so we are comparing apples to apples. The LifeStages brand will set you back $184, so it is approx $50 more than our crate. It will probably be a bit more expensive in a physical pet store as well.