New Cavy Owner

[Cavyman]

Hello all

I love the site and wanted to post a message.

It all started when my 9 year old step daughter came home from school with a 3 month old gray female piggie in a box. A teacher let her have it and my wife said OK thinkig it came with a cage and other items.

We named her Piglet "the wife is a big whiney the pooh fan"

Well my wife bought a cage for it, food, water bottles, Pine bedding stuff and learned that she got the wrong cage. The cage had a wire bottom. We covered that with cardboard but that was not good enough. The bedding was getting kicked out of the cage.

1st Cage $35

So we decide we need a new cage.
Was reading info on the web and learned alot about these lil ones. We learned that they are happier if they have a companion. So we decided to buy another female.
Turns out the local petstore had a deal where if you buy a cage you get the Piggie for $15 dollars off.

So we got a second Female Piggie, she is brown with some white and black. Wife named her Tiger.

The larger cages where $119 and up, but I found a good sized one for $50 that had a door on top and looked spacious for 2 Piggies.

2nd cage $50

After getting it all set up and moving the Piggies, they had a lil dominance dance but appear to get along fine now.

It is now quite clear that this cage is TINY!

More web research led me to this wonderful site..

I intend to build a C&C cage for them this weekend.

My plan is to make a 2x4, maybe 2x5 cage and have it on our living room floor, near a wall. Its a good spot because it is not a High traffic area but it is close to everyone who is in the living room watching tv and whatnot.

I noticed alot of people put cages on the floor so i suppose it is ok to do it that way. I cant afford to spend much more money on this hobby right now...

I plan to do the following with bedding..
Bottom layer, Newspaper
Next layer - Pine shaving stuff until we are out
Top - Timothy Hay

I wanted to know how safe it is to put cloth type items in the cage. They appear to enjoy chewing everything, yet i read where people put carpet in the gage, rags, dolls and the like. wouldnt they chew that and get sick?
What about cardboard from shoe boxes and the like?

 

[tashagurl]

Cardboards ok. A good toy is the empty toilet paper/paper towel rolls. They love to chew them up and toss them all over the cage. Shoeboxes are a good inexpensive hidy house. Mine adore them.

 

[CavySpirit]

Welcome to the site. Glad you found it. Your pigs will love the new digs when you get it done.

Have you double-checked the sexing page (www.cavyspirit.com/sexing.htm) to confirm the sexes? That's very important.

When the cage is large enough, you can add in some other toys or play things. Some of my pigs like a stuffed thing to use as a pillow. Amazingly, they've never chewed it. But you do have to check to make sure they don't. The old toys page has all the info, but I have reformatted it yet. Check it out: www.guineapigcages.com/toys.htm.