Our regular followers might have been forgiven for thinking that we haven’t had many piggies passing through our doors recently. Well, all that changed a few months ago when we stepped in to help one of the National RSPCA inspectors with a truly huge guinea pig rescue mission.
In one house roughly 140 piggies were found who had been largely left to their own devices. The result wasn’t surprising and their numbers soon grew out of control. Thankfully the National RSPCA stepped in and offered to help rehome them. Across the country, branches like ours stepped up to help!
After finally freeing up our small animals room from a large rabbit case, we were able to take in 12 sows (girls). In the end 8 of these ladies gave birth to 27 babies! Sadly, 5 did not survive despite our best efforts. The largest litter was 6 and the smallest (was a wonderfully concise) 2 little ones.
We currently have 20 piggies in foster care and the rest are living at our centre in Salford. Our weekly veg bill currently stands at £120!
The majority of the babies born have been boars (boys) which brings its own problems. Historically it’s always taken longer to rehome boys. Often people who want to adopt from us already have an existing herd and want to adopt girls (as they already have a neutered boy with girls) or have girls and want to adopt a single neutered boy to join them. We have lots of adult male pairs and single baby boys who are too young to be neutered!
In their foster home: boy baby pair Ronnie & Donnie
Boys are generally best in pairs or neutered to live with girls as the only boy.
We have another complication too, most of the boys are black furred – the least popular of all the colours of animals after albinos. Sadly, this happens with cats and rabbits too where other more ‘desirable’ colours are picked over our black beauties.
We are hoping that our amazing supporters will help our little lads by spreading the word. So many piggies in our care means that we can’t take in any others that may need our help so it’s vital we find them the loving homes they need but also free up our resources to help even more little wheekers!
Here are some of the boys coming up for adoption when they are 6 weeks of age. At the moment we have pairs and singles. The pairs need to be rehomed together (with no other piggies) in a min. 6x2ft set up or 6×2 C&C set up. Read about brilliant C&C set ups here. Boys need lots of space and multiple resources ie. hidey huts to avoid squabbles when puberty hits.
Our single baby boys will make great companions for any lonely, single, adult male piggies in need of a friend. We can advise on introductions and bonding too! If you have a lonely adult male pig again the same set up applies as above.
Every adopter who brings one or two of our boys into their family will be provided with a voucher towards neutering costs so this can be done by 5 months of age.
We will of course also have lots of girls available for adoption over the coming weeks. Although girls are easier to rehome we hope you can help us with them too and share their write ups once we post them on Facebook. Here are some of the girls that will be up for adoption:
We’ll also be running a very special appeal for 3 girls – a mum and her two blind baby girls. This trio are truly adorable and despite being born blind, the babies charge around like the best of them! More about them in the next blog post….
Sadly these little ones, Bobo & Feta were born without eyes and need a special indoor home with their mum, Oreo.
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