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SonicYooth posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't the wire cage you have pictured in the first post cause bumblefoot in guinea pigs? Those are used for the walls in place of cubes when you can't find them.
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Nov 19, 2009 14:14
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Honestly, I'd try to find a wildlife place, but they're going to make terrible pets. Wild animals are wild, and they're going to be basically unhandleable. Even half-wild/half-domestic rats are often so skittish and spastic that they can barely be handled.
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Dec 27, 2009 14:22
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SonicYooth posted:Both from my understanding. You're supposed to (at least ideally) have the cages in two separate rooms for 2-3 weeks so that you can observe both to ensure that they are healthy before trying introductions. Sometimes this isn't possible in small apartments so in that case just having them apart is a good first step. Also you need to wash your hands between handling them so that you don't carry mites etc back and forth. No harm done in this case, mites are cheap and easy to treat. Ditto this. 3 weeks is commonly recommended because ringworm has a 21 day period before it can show up. It seems to have the longest incubation period, so if you manage to rule it out, typically everything else has already shown up. But it also keeps your pigs from having mites, lice, respiratory infections, eye infections, intestinal parasites, and a whole slew of other goodies from the animal you're bringing in. This is really important with pet store animals, because recent studies are suggesting that even animals that appear healthy can be carrying all sorts of crap subclinically. It seems impossible to have THAT many sick animals... but health inspectors recommended that they raze the building to the ground of the place in Texas that was raided for milling animals because it was such a huge hole of infection and disease.
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Jan 1, 2010 19:52
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If you decide to continue, you need to do at least two weeks of cage swapping with the gerbils. Move them every day to each other's cage. That way they learn each other's scent, and so when you put them together they're not living with a stranger because they know the scent. I've had a lot of success with gerbil introductions done that way, whereas the "sitting next door" method has never seemed that successful.
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Jan 15, 2010 12:52
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maplecheese posted:I'd say yes, but most of it's already been distributed to the guinea pigs, rabbits, and chinchillas, with a little tiny bit going to the degus and rats. And I'm hoping the rest of it will get distributed this weekend. Be careful with the chins, they're not really supposed to have fresh veggies.
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Jan 22, 2010 22:22
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Also, if you've got a good rescue in the area, they'll do "dating" with your guinea pigs, much like house rabbit rescues, so that you won't be stuck with two pigs that won't get along. I've done several for the rescue I foster for. Pigs seem more laid back than bunnies and we've only had a few failures.
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Jan 23, 2010 15:16
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He is really drat adorable. (But I have a thing for orange pigs)
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Jan 26, 2010 23:12
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Buying hay locally is heavily dependent on where you live. Orchard and timothy are both cool season grasses, so they don't grow well down south and virtually no one grows them as hay. Around here they primarily do bermuda and fescue, both of which are extremely coarse and typically considered "cow hay" (fescue is also prone to fungus so it's a bad choice for pigs anyway). There are a few horse barns around here that truck in orchard/timothy from up north, but the quality is pretty highly variable. I'd get 2-3 good bales and then bales that looked like they'd been drug behind a truck. Even my worst Oxbow bales were much better than my unlucky local bales. So if there's a good place nearby, go nuts, but don't be surprised if the hay is disappointing.
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Feb 3, 2010 15:59
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One big one, do not separate unless you see bite wounds or a there's a fur tornado.
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Feb 4, 2010 23:40
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Imaduck posted:Well, it did not go too well. We washed both of them, and put a bit of cologne on each of them. Then, we placed them both on opposite ends of the bed. They chattered their teeth at each other for about 10 minutes, chased around each other's butts, then launched into full-fledged attack mode. We tossed a towel on them and separated them, but not before Milo got a little cut on his lip and Jasper got a cut near his mouth I typically put them on the floor with a fleece underneath and a grid pen all around. Make sure it's huge. Then put out several piles of hay and vegetables. No hiding houses, they'll only cause fights. Plan on this taking several hours. I usually block off at least 3 hours when I do it for adopters. Get a small squirty bottle and several hand towels. If the pigs have already had a fight, let them interact carefully, but keep an eye on them. If they start to engage in aggressive behavior, redirect them either with the squirt bottle or simply by chasing them off. The longer you can get them to coexist together in the same place without fighting the better your odds are. Add vegetables in shifts, offer them special treats like strawberries, etc. The bath idea does work, and make sure to suds them good and make it as traumatic as possible.
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Feb 5, 2010 16:08
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ConscientiousPuffin posted:My chins, Apollo and Loki, aren't getting along either (they are both male) I'd say the key is the experience of the vet. I know a lot of rescues are routinely spaying and neutering small animals (guinea pigs, rabbits, rats, and yep, chinchillas). The complications primarily stem from inexperienced vets and vets that are going off of extremely old protocols and not using gas anesthetic. We've neutered a couple of chins that I was fostering and they were an even easier recovery than most of the guinea pigs that we do. But our vet does see and neuter a fair amount of chinchillas.
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Mar 1, 2010 12:57
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Ditto Kazmeyer, although having an exotics vet will typically extend their life a great deal. The symptoms you describe happen with virtually every illness -- anything from simple stasis to bladder stones to cancer to arthritis, even. A knowledgeable vet is the most important tool you can have in keeping your guinea pigs healthy. Basically, guinea pigs are wusses, and virtually everything makes them stop eating. Once they stop eating, they'll quickly "crash", even when their problems are retardedly simple and easy to deal with.
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Mar 17, 2010 04:45
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Would definitely recheck this on your own. Pet store employees aren't necessarily the most reliable founts of information, even about sexing which seems so drat basic.
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May 2, 2010 02:16
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Nereid posted:This is a ridiculous generalization considering how many PI goons also work in pet stores. There's not nearly enough goons to work every pet store in the nation. Most pet store employees are just retail employees trained through the store's own information systems, which are notoriously bad. It's not their fault, they just need a job to pay the bills and most of them like animals alright and seem to enjoy their jobs, but the sources they're taught from are not that reliable. There are some knowledgeable pet store folks, but they're far and wide the minority. Aquatic Giraffe posted:Question: Dex has gotten a bit big for his "starter" chinchilla cage, and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for a good bigger chinchilla cage. My foster chin is in the Quality Cages Chinchilla mansion, and I like it pretty well, overall. It's pretty pricey, but even as an old dude he makes a lot of use of the room.
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May 2, 2010 13:34
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chinchilla posted:I've never seen her do that kick-flip thing in the cage. She does it everywhere else, though, so I guess she just knows better. It's not about knowing better, it's just that she hasn't had the bad luck to botch a jump and get a leg caught in there. Broken legs are one of the most common things you see in chinchillas, and they can be onerous to deal with. Amputation is not that uncommon in severe breaks.
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May 6, 2010 15:03
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You're not really dooming them if they're getting hormonal and not getting along. That's extremely common in male mice, unfortunately. I know you don't want to split them up, but Cheesy can actually kill Toast, and TBH I'd take Toast to the vet to get some antibiotics if he's already gotten his rear end kicked to the point where he's bleeding.
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May 14, 2010 11:30
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RazorBunny posted:Well, there aren't a lot of things in the UK that would eat them anyway, are there? That's a hard thing to discuss because there's no scientific data, but I see a disproportionate amount of "my guinea pig was eaten by a dog/got loose/died/etc" posts from the UK/Europe area. The UK does have dogs and cats and birds of prey, as well as foxes (Guinealynx has a hilarious picture of someone who caught a fox pissing by their guinea pig run). I've seen a couple of reports of rodents (I'd assume rats?) attacking guinea pigs in sheds. The weather doesn't agree with them, but it's not really the cold you have to worry about -- it's the heat. I think it's just one of those things where if they do die outside it tends to elicit a "Well, that's nature for it, just look at the miracle of nature all eating my pets and poo poo" instead of "Holy poo poo, my guinea pig wouldn't have been ripped to shreds if it was in my house". Here's a news story from today from an educational facility that had it's guinea pig enclosure breached by a fox. The tone of the facility is basically "Well, foxes just get animals occasionally, but we wish they wouldn't kill a dozen at the time!" You'd think a facility constantly having animals dragged off by foxes would consider some indoor space or better fences or something, but they kind of go back to the "Awww, look at nature  " approach.
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May 15, 2010 15:57
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We have gotten in guinea pigs having heat issues in temperatures as low as 75 degrees (23 Celsius). These are usually animals that got abandoned outside to "run free" in the wild. The problem is, even if it usually only gets to 25, it only has to hit 27-28 for one day to wipe out your herd. People will even put them out for a day in the sun, providing shade in part of the pen, assuming that they'll move to the shade when they get hot. They won't, pigs are not that bright, they'd stand there and let you chainsaw them in half if there was food available. They will stand in the sun and eat grass until they collapse. I see more problems from cats trying to attack guinea pigs from outside of the cage than digging in. Because of the bacteria that cats carry, scratches or bites can become infected quickly (see: wildlife rehabilitators and their bitching about outside cats). To be honest, I kind of roll my eyes at the people who "don't have space" for a guinea pig cage. Our last house was 900 square feet. Tiny. Including my fosters, I often had 10-14 guinea pigs in my house at any given time, each pair having at least 7.5 square feet. We've got other foster homes that have one bedroom apartments and have no trouble accommodating a cage large enough for two guinea pigs to have plenty of room. It is more of a cultural thing, and there's really not much you can do to change it. The bigger problem (as I see it) is that all of these uncontrollable factors tend to bring down the overall lifespan of the animals. Then people see a three year old guinea pig become ill and don't want to bother with vet care because "they all die around three anyway", without seeing that often these mitigating factors contribute to the shortened lifespan. Heck, just seeing the animals more often gives you a higher chance of noticing their more subtle signs of illness. Honestly, if one of my pigs dies at three, I assume they've got a congenital abnormality, because it's really rare that ours pass before 5, and it's fairly normal to see them hitting the 7-9 mark. I also see this a lot with rabbits. When I discuss keeping them indoors, they often defend themselves with a statement similar to "well all my other rabbits have lived to be five!" when a more typical lifespan of a healthy houserabbit is 10-12 years (depending on the breed and size).
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May 15, 2010 17:25
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Amorphous Blob posted:I've been wondering this for a while, and PI should be a good place to ask. Should I get a second piggy to keep my current one company? I've got a pretty big cage which used to house three pigs, and the pig I have now is about a year old. He used to have a friend that he got along very well with, but he was four at the time and passed away a while ago. Any advice? Guinea pigs are social creatures, and generally introductions are not that difficult. The big thing is finding another guinea pig that yours gets along with. If there's a rescue in your state, I'd contact them about adopting, since they'll be able to help you with introductions and you won't be stuck with two single guinea pigs if your first attempt doesn't work out.
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May 16, 2010 14:12
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Just know that some pigs absolutely won't use the lever bottles, and I have anecdotally heard of pigs getting their tongues hurt by having them pinched (they ain't that smart). You may just want to try a different brand of bottle if that one tends to leak. I've have good luck with the Lixit bottles, and whatever the brand is that makes the fancy glass bottles.
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May 25, 2010 15:59
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Hoplosternum posted:Eeeeeeeee Max & Osker are so cute, I want to cuddle them to death. It's a highly individual thing, but as a species they tend not to. The fosters I've dealt with have been very happy to receive chin scratches and face rubs, but if you attempted to pick them up they'd start barking at you and one lovely puffball would then try to spray urine at me.
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Jun 2, 2010 12:03
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CGChewie posted:Does anyone have any experience with sugar gliders? The girlfriend has been talking about them constantly for the past few weeks. Nocturnal, complicated diet, hard to find vets for, requires a fair amount of effort to bond to them. Also assholes try to sell them as fun and easy pets..
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Jun 4, 2010 20:35
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drat Bananas posted:Well the reason a lot of people hate pet store puppies is because there's already such an overpopulation problem with them that shelters are euthanizing them left and right, and they're horrible because they're adding more and more puppies to the problem. It's not the same thing with chinchillas because there are so few of them in his/her area. Besides, one purchase is a drop in the bucket for those companies, I think letting two animals (that are a social species) have an excellent life is much better than two miserable/lonely lives at the expense of .0000001% of the mill's profit that they're not going to notice anyway. It's not *the* ideal solution but you don't have to be such a complete jerk about it. No, a lot of the reason people hate pet store puppies is that they come from drat dog mills. Guess what else comes from a mill?  If it was really a drop in the bucket, people wouldn't flip their poo poo whenever someone bought a pet store puppy. The real truth is that people don't get upset because it's not a dog or a cat -- it's just a rodent. Guess what else? There are 10 chinchillas on Petfinder listed an hour away (or less) from Fairfax. I got this esoteric information by typing Chinchilla into Petfinder. Chinchillas are overpopulated, especially because doofuses keep getting male/female pairs because bonding males is so hard!  I see 4-5 listed here every day (and I'm only about 5 hours south) and we get surrender requests almost weekly.The problem was further compounded by this person buying a pet store chinchilla, doing absolutely no kind of quarantine, and then throwing his chinchilla in with it. Any infectious disease it's been harboring since the pet mill, any parasite, you've now exposed your chinchilla to. The whole thing is kind of a cluster, but what's really disappointing is people coming in to white knight supporting a pet mill, because waiting another month to see if they could locate another breeder or investigate one of these many rescued chins was too hard.
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Jun 21, 2010 11:58
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:I admit I was a bit skeptical about applying commercial pesticide to my pigs, but the vet told me that it was safe as long as I didn't put it on their faces. It got rid of the mites and my pigs were perfectly fine. YMMV, I guess. I think the big concern would be that even if you didn't put it directly on their face, they're still going to groom (sticking their face in it, and licking it off of themselves). It's still kind of weird that a vet would send you to Lowe's to buy pesticide -- he should have ivermectin in his office, the stuff is cheap as dirt. (I just bought a liter of it for like $10).
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Jun 21, 2010 20:33
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The stuff pet store employees have told me over the years absolutely blows my mind. While picking up an accidental litter of guinea pigs a woman had had, she told me the store told her guinea pigs didn't start mating until they were 6 months old and that they only had one heat a year so you could keep them separated like dogs.
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Jun 24, 2010 18:33
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Karatehamster posted:Is the peeing something that just happens sometimes or is that something I should be alarmed about? Also, if she's as nervous next time is there anything I can do to make it a bit easier on the lady pig? Guinea pigs have the bladder control of drunken frat boys, they basically pee whenever the urge hits.
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Jul 11, 2010 21:44
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Part-Time Robot posted:All these piggy stories make me sad. I found out the hard way that I am super-allergic to guinea pigs and will probably never be able to own one myself. I know this sounds dumb, but make sure you're allergic to the pigs and not to the hay. A lot of people are "allergic" to pigs only to then get a rabbit or a chin and realize it was the hay making them miserable.
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Jul 20, 2010 11:58
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whatspeakyou posted:Quick change of subject here: What should I name my pet Hedgehog (Not a rodent, but close enough, damnit)? Captain Abernathy.
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Jul 27, 2010 19:16
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drat Bananas posted:Don't get a live animal for anyone without their knowledge, if you were planning on making it a surprise. If you want, get him a gift card to Petco and a little information book on Chinchillas in one gift box and have him decide on it and pick it out himself. Would definitely recommend not buying from Petsmart or Petco, I've talked to plenty of breeders who use big chains like those to get rid of their stock they won't breed anymore because the lines are throwing serious health issues like self mutilation or tooth problems.
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Sep 2, 2010 23:21
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beneatsfood posted:This is my good pal hippo. He is my girlfriend's pig. For some reason he won't eat anything but his pellets and his hay... We've tried a bunch of different kinds of fruits and vegetables, but he just wont budge. Is this normal, or even healthy for him? It's not healthy but it is "normal", in the sense that pet store guinea pigs come from enormous breeding mills where they never bother to feed them vegetables so most of them have no idea what they are. I've had to force feed many a pig stalks of parsley and cilantro to get them to get the idea. Also those starter cages are poo poo and way too small which is why it's constantly a mound of turds. It's like keeping your dog locked in a crate all day. Check out http://www.guineapigcages.com. Once he's in a decent sized cage he won't constantly be swimming in crap. If you try to use fleece is one of those tiny cages it'll be filthy very fast.
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Sep 9, 2010 04:04
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SomeChump posted:Piggy (Chewie) seems fine. I just weight both him and his brother (Bertie) and they're both 400g/3lbs, is that a good weight? He's been fine ever since, I think I just panicked, with guinea-pig illnesses being both rapid and deadly and Chewie seeming out of sorts. Anyway, thanks for the help with them, I really appreciate it. I think your scale is broken. 3 pounds is 1300g. 400g is stupidly small for an adult pig, and 3 pounds is pretty big.
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Sep 16, 2010 00:22
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SomeChump posted:edit: Weighted both the piggies: Chewie (the one I was worried about) and Bertie (his brother) andn they're both 1.4kg/3lbs. They're a bit chubby yeah, but after half an hour outside thye'll just chill out under a tree and wait to be picked up. Other than underfeeding, is there any realistic way of controlling their weight? What's their diet like now? What size cage are they in?
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Sep 16, 2010 01:15
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SomeChump posted:They have a constant supply of guinea-pig nuggets and and rotation of lettuce, chicory, carrots, spring greens and cucumber, of they always have carbs and vegetables. With their cage, we deliberately bought a small rabbit cage rather than a guinea pig cage for extra room, and they go out into the garden three to four times a week. That's why they're fat, they shouldn't have unlimited pellets. An ideal diet for an adult pig is unlimited grass hay (timothy, orchard, etc), around a cup of fresh vegetables a day (you're doing good on that), and then a very small amount of pellets, around 1/4 of a cup per pig. Measure the cage and figure out how much space they've got. Even "big" rabbit cages are often far too small to allow them to really do much but stroll around and fatten themselves. Generally the bare minimum recommended is 7.5 square feet, but 10+ is really better.
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Sep 16, 2010 02:24
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RazorBunny posted:My vet charged me less than $30 to euthanize my last rat, and I live in an expensive area. It's worth asking around. I'm willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt if he calls around and finds out there still isn't any way he can afford humane euthanasia, but if he hasn't even made any calls then there's really no excusing it. This exactly. While there are a limited number of competent exotic vets, really any vet can euthanize a hamster and it shouldn't cost that much. It's on the owner to ensure they're using gas + injection, but other than that, you don't have to be super competent to gas something down and kill it.
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Sep 22, 2010 12:35
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dweebgal posted:My first step is to see what the animal shelter have, but I have a feeling they won't rehome with people in rented accommodation, so I may end up getting something from a pet shop anyway. I've never really talked to a rescue that would refuse to home to people in apartments for small animals. We usually ask for the landlord's name and then call to check and make sure they're sympatico with a new furry tenant!
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Oct 11, 2010 05:47
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Fatty Patty posted:I have a question about a hedgehog, who isn't a rodent, but is similar in size. I've read online that it is safe to use a small amount (.01mL) of Revolution on hedgehogs/animals of that size. I don't think he has mites, but I'd like to start treating him for preventative measures. Anyone have any experience with this? I don't have experience specifically with hedgehogs, but you can use Revolution on exotics (in general) to treat mites. However, you can't just give a flat amount (like .01 -- which is really only a workable dosage for something smaller than a mouse). You do need to weigh them and do some math to figure out what the correct dosage is based on weight. Hopefully a hedgiegoon will come along soon with better information about correct dosing, because it can vary quite a bit between species.
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Oct 14, 2010 12:41
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She's gonna need a buddy. Rats are super social! They'll sleep where they're comfy, and generally wherever looks weird.
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Dec 2, 2010 16:51
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Diogines posted:One or possibly both of my piggies dragged one of the pigloos around their enclosure. It was moved about 2 feet in another direction. Based on the way it was moved, it seems intentional, I do not see how it could have moved it into that position without meaning to do so. Yep, pig redecorating is common. They like to move stuff around and rearrange it. It's not accidental, but you can move it back, it won't offend them or anything.
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Dec 15, 2010 19:07
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alucinor posted:How else are they going to explore, except by taking their safe house with them? I think if they could, they would evolve into turtles and take their pigloos everywhere with them. The optimal spot for pigs is to drag the food bowl over by the water bottle and then the pigloo over the bowl so they can eat and drink from within their plastic shell.
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Dec 15, 2010 20:52
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Z. Beeblebrox posted:Chinchilla issues... They do go through a kind of teenaged period, but you also have to keep in mind that he came from a pet store and likely from a giant mill breeder where he was basically never handled and didn't have social interaction. It's kind of like bringing home a puppy-mill dog and then having to deal with the accompanying issues. Some chins adapt quickly, but others take longer and need some intensive socialization. I mean, he's had a fairly traumatic beginning -- mill to pet store to new place, to getting trapped under a cabinet and having to be crowbarred out... I think he really just needs more time and needs more time to bond with you. It was kind of an rear end in a top hat thing to have your MIL buy a 20 year commitment for you and risk your current chin (if she didn't do quarantine).
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Dec 23, 2010 08:53
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