C&C Alternatives Closet Shelving Cage General Questions

[sallyvh]

@spy9doc Of course I remember Maya! She has the most gorgeous coat in those photos!

I'm interested to see my little one personality as she grows. She's very active and really friendly. She had entropion when she was first born in her one eye so she required frequently handling and eye drops. Her eye was perfectly healed up after a week or so but all the handling made her super friendly.

She's a wheeker too! My ring leader of squeaking Gretchen passed away in March and although my pigs do still wheek, it was her who really got them going. I've only had Alice for a week but she loves to let me know when it's veggie time and encourages the others to join in

She's just such a little dream and I'm looking forward to having a long haired pig, I've wanted one for forever.

 

[DwarfhamstersandPiggies]

I wouldn't trust a pet store to sex them correctly. We've had many pregnant "males" on this forum because they were incorrectly sexed at the pet store.

The first thing you should do is read www.cavyspirit.com/sexing.htm so you know what you're looking for. Then, when you're picking pigs, turn them both over and examine their private parts carefully. If they're not the same, keep looking until you find two that are.

well umm thats not what i meant i mean prior to buying them should i take a picture of the parts which determine sex and them show you guys it give a professional opinion

 

[sallyvh]

Agreed with @bpatters. This seems like a nice size for 3 sows. It comfortably fits their litter box as well as 3 hides but still leaves them room to run around. I wouldn't do anymore than that though.

As with sexing them, any time I have brought a pig home I double check to make sure it's a female. Even though I have gotten mine from trusted places I still rather check and be sure.

I would highly recommend finding some not at a pet store though.

 

[DwarfhamstersandPiggies]

Agreed with @bpatters. This seems like a nice size for 3 sows. It comfortably fits their litter box as well as 3 hides but still leaves them room to run around. I wouldn't do anymore than that though.

As with sexing them, any time I have brought a pig home I double check to make sure it's a female. Even though I have gotten mine from trusted places I still rather check and be sure.

I would highly recommend finding some not at a pet store though.

yeah my cage might be slightly bigger
and on the topic on where I'm getting them its most likely pet store
there isn't anywhere else close enough to me

 

[DwarfhamstersandPiggies]

Man-up (or cowgirl-up) and learn to do it yourself and make your own judgment. It's not that difficult........just extrude the male's penis and then you will know. If there's no penis, then I assume that you can figure out the answer. Pictures are no substitute for actually looking at the genitals. If you are too squeamish to examine genitals, then for goodness sake don't buy boars because you will need to inspect and clean genitals weekly.

k
im not that squeamish i thought it may be complicated

 

[bpatters]

Ditto @spy9doc. If it's very obvious, we can tell from the pictures, but so can you, looking at the pig. If it's not obvious, we can't tell, but you should be able to if you learn how to do it before you get to the pigs.

 

[sallyvh]

@spy9doc I've heard that entropion is common in newborn teddies and texels but they outgrow it, something to do with the rexoid gene or whatnot...

Hers was very mild and was corrected quickly. She's 6 weeks old and her eyes look great. They are perfectly normal and shouldn't cause her any issues in the future.

Definitely am expecting to do a fair amount of butter trims on her. I'm hoping to keep her curls as long as is manageable for me. I love the curly coat but I will have to wait and see if it's doable for me keep long.

 

[sallyvh]

Just thought I would do a little update with the cage and how well it functions after using it for a week.

On a whole I am very pleased with it. It provides plenty of space, the girls seem to love it and it's definitely cat proof.

There are a couple of little hiccups though. The first is that it's a little challenging hanging the water bottles. The wire shelving is only 12 inches high, in hindsight it would have possibly been a better decision to go with the 16 inch shelving. They still hang on but they can fall of the side of the cage kind of easy and the get in the way of the lid a little.

The other issue is one that will be fixed later on. I made the cage 36" wide and it's sort of difficult to clean the back corner of the cage. I'm just over 5 feet tall and it's quite the reach. The cage is on our dining room table for now and it's tall. I'm going to have my dad build a table specifically for the cage and I'm going to make it not very tall so I can reach to the back without standing on a stool or chair.

Overall it's great though! The girls are all getting along really well. Olive is definitely the boss and can be a bit nippy with the others. Penelope (brown one) absolutely loves the baby though and is always snuggling with her and grooming her.

Here's a quick photo of them, Alice the little texel will be 7 weeks old on Sunday:







They are all mildly annoyed with me here, they had their nails trimmed and are upset with me!

 

[lunarminx]

Just thought I would do a little update with the cage and how well it functions after using it for a week.

On a whole I am very pleased with it. It provides plenty of space, the girls seem to love it and it's definitely cat proof.

There are a couple of little hiccups though. The first is that it's a little challenging hanging the water bottles. The wire shelving is only 12 inches high, in hindsight it would have possibly been a better decision to go with the 16 inch shelving. They still hang on but they can fall of the side of the cage kind of easy and the get in the way of the lid a little.

The other issue is one that will be fixed later on. I made the cage 36" wide and it's sort of difficult to clean the back corner of the cage. I'm just over 5 feet tall and it's quite the reach. The cage is on our dining room table for now and it's tall. I'm going to have my dad build a table specifically for the cage and I'm going to make it not very tall so I can reach to the back without standing on a stool or chair.

Overall it's great though! The girls are all getting along really well. Olive is definitely the boss and can be a bit nippy with the others. Penelope (brown one) absolutely loves the baby though and is always snuggling with her and grooming her.

Here's a quick photo of them, Alice the little texel will be 7 weeks old on Sunday:

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They are all mildly annoyed with me here, they had their nails trimmed and are upset with me!

How do you have a black piggy with light nails...I am so jealous. My black pigs all had black nails.

 

[sallyvh]

How do you have a black piggy with light nails...I am so jealous. My black pigs all had black nails.

Haha! Not all of them are white, only two feet have the little white toes. The other two feet are pure black.

She's my first dark nailed pig. Every day when I take her out to feed her parsley I spend time picking up each of her feet and handling them. I'm hoping to get her used to me touching her feet so that she's still as an adult when I clip her nails. She's already pretty relaxed with me handling her, thank goodness as she will need a lot of coat maintenance as she ages!

 

[sallyvh]

Alice's coat looks dry, or is it just the lighting? Texels can have fine hair or quite coarse and you probably won't know about hers until she gets a little older. When people are showing Texels, they fine mist them with water to get their coat to lie in ringlets. That's what I did in the pics of Maya before I started cutting her hair.

I'm thinking it's probably just a combo of the lighting and my phone's camera.

In real life her coat is quite soft and fluffy, it definitely doesn't feel dry to the touch!

Do you know of anything I could even put in her coat that would be safe? I was thinking maybe coconut oil, but I don't want to make her greasy. I also worry about anyone ingesting anything. Penelope absolutely adores her and is always cuddling and grooming her so I don't want her to eat traces of anything that could hurt her.

 

[pigger123]

I put coconut oil all over my piggy before I bathed her, and even after shampooing twice and rinsing very well she ended up looking greasy for weeks! She didn't seem to mind at all, just looked a little silly. But she is a shorthair and I probably put too much.

 

[sallyvh]

I'm just going to leave her fur alone for now, in person it definitely doesn't seem dry.

I'm going to place an order for gorgeous guineas shampoo though, they have a conditioning one made specifically for long haired breeds which I would like to try.

Her getting greasy is my number one concern wiyh using oils and I don't want to be bathing her constantly. She's so small and was very stressed when I bathed her for intros. I may pick up some avacodo oil in the future though.

She's fine for now though, she's growing up so quickly and is quite the little sweetheart!