Should I release my hamster to nature? My hamster is trying to "break jail" every night. I wonder if it is eager to be free. Will it be happier living in the wild?
If by "the wild" you mean inside your home, then by all means go ahead.He will love living under your fridge. Ours did, when he escaped. Make sure and leave out some food and water and he'll be happy as a clam. Oh, but he'll need a mate. The two of them will be happy under your fridge or they may decide to move into larger quarters behind the dishwasher when the kids arrive. They'll die eventually, probably from chewing on power cords or falling into the toilet. I don't know how ours did it, but he somehow found a way. (We found him before it was Too Late.) Some of their offspring should survive though, and continue to entertain you by climbing into your sock drawer and chewing up your socks to make a nest.In the outdoors, they will soon get cold and wet, and they won't know how to find food or evade predators, so that is not safe for them. They won't be happy at all.I think what your hamster really wants is some exercise. First, he needs a running wheel in his cage. This is an absolute necessity. Hamsters love to run and explore, that's why they love escaping. In measured wheels, they have been recorded traveling as far as four miles in one night! That doesn't mean they want to be fed to the neighborhood cats and owls in the great outdoors.We let ours out for a run every night, indoors of course. We taught them to come when we called. (They were all very tame to handle, so they were not scared of us.) I call a hamster by scratching and making scuttling sounds with my fingers on the floor. They are so curious about that noise that they always come to see if it might be another hamster. Then I just scoop them up. Sometimes they would fall asleep in certain favourite places, like my shoe cupboard. We got to know where to look for them. Don't ever feed them outside their cage (except as bait). If they can't find any food during their outings they are usually happy to find a treat back in their cage when they return.For the more skittish ones, another way to catch them is to put a small dark box on the floor. We used a tea cannister. Dark holes are irresistible to hamsters, they just can't help themselves, but must go in and take a look. Worked every time. We had full-sized hamsters, not the mini Russian ones. The mini ones are much harder to tame and catch, but I think the same techniques might work.
Mini/micro pig wont poop? :(?
hi! i got a mini pig that is 2 months old and when he right got in my home he was very stressed and pooping hard and small balls..1 week after, his poop was normal again but now im very worried because he is not pooping at all, even tough he keeps eating... I gave him cow milk, i put olive oil in his food, canned pumpkim... but nothing seems to work! I read somewhere on internet that if he starts digging on the floor it means he is sick... but he always digs, not on the floor, but on us... is he way of playing so im very confused! Can you help me? itried finding some pig lax but i cant find it since im living in China... THANK YOU!
Guinea Pig owners, whats you guinea pig like?
My guinea pig's name is Peanut. I call her that because she has a fat head (full of air....still so cute!) a thinner middle, and a big rump. She looks like a peanut! She loves to eat! She would eat anything! One time my dad gave her a cupcake! She loved it! She also loves to run around my yard. She is fast for a plump thing! If you get one, make sure that you keep an eye on it all the time because mine likes to head for the woods! The are so loving and love to be cuddled. Best pets in the world!
What can I put in my guinea pig cage to make it smell nicer without poisoning her?
Carol's got it. (: Don't listen to Susan's suggestion about cedar chips. True, they do smell really nice, but they're dangerous to the piggies.
I am almost certain my guinea pig has a URI, but I cannot take him to the vet. What is a "home remedy" option?
Goodness, I don't understand why you couldn't take him to the vet. Vets will usually help your pet even if you can't pay right away, and there are agencies that help low income people with medical costs for their non-human family members. Please investigate this! On the off chance that you are 1,000+ miles away from the nearest vet and literally cannot physically get to one, then I'd suggest calling one and explaining the symptoms at least. Perhaps they will be willing to make an educated guess, and could mail you antibiotics quickly enough to save him. Without a proper exam and probably some testing, they won't be sure what the cause is, so there's a risk with that too. If for some reason that is also not possible, then you are reduced to whatever you can do to save your furry friend. Start with his habitat. Clean it really well. His bedding could have brought in mold spores, or become mouldy from moisture. Clean and dry everything very well. If his feed is old, discard it. Make sure there is fresh, clean water every day, feed him plenty of fresh foods, particularly vitamin rich ones, and remove what isn't eaten everyday. Apparently Guinea pigs have a higher requirement for vitamin C than many animals. While he is recovering, give him fresh bedding daily as well, but you should tidy his cage daily and wash and dry the cage and refresh the bedding a couple of times a week anyway. Make sure you use a bedding that is neither dusty or wood shavings of a type with volatile oils (pine, cedar). Are you in a home with forced air? Make sure he is not close to any of the vents. Is the air dry? Increase the humidity. Is there enough ventilation? If he's in an aquarium instead of a cage for example, that's not good. Is he sharing a habitat with other animals? Separate them. I don't know what else to tell you, except that if there is even a tiny possibility of getting him to a vet, please do not hesitate. An infection like this could be fatal for your little buddy and he needs your help. I hope you can help him.
More questions about guinea pigs?
You guys are probably getting sick of me, because I'm like asking all these questions. Lol. But yeah, I have more questions to ask. Ijust need to make sure I'm prepared before I get 2 guinea pigs. :P 1. I understand that you have to give guinea pigs fresh water everyday. Can you give them tap water? Or do I need to buy like one of the PUR filters? And yes I know you have to give them one of those supplements in their water in order to give them more Vitamin C. 2. If you have 2 guinea pigs, will they get jealous over one another? Like if I took one out, and left one in? And then switched? My mom asked me that, but I really don't know. 3. What type of paper do you put on the bottom of the cage, so when you have to clean it, you can just role the paper up, and throw it away? Because that would help me out alot when I clean the cage. 4. Are you supposed to feed guinea pigs carrots everyday? Because on some websites it says feed every other day, some say every day. Which should I do? Better yet, what should I feed them everyday, and what should I feed them every other day? I know fruit is like a treat, and should be given every other day... 5. You're not supposed to get a running wheel, or one of those excercise balls right? Because it can damage the guinea pig's feet, and back? If there's anything else I need to know, please inform me! Thanks in advance. All help is appreciated!
HELP MY guinea pig doesnt have hair behind its ears!!!?
Yes, it is normal, as long as the patch is not too big. Most guinea pigs have a "bald patch" directly behind their ear. Usually it is the same size or smaller than the ear itself, so it you fold the ear over you won't be able to see the patch anymore, it would be hidden under the ear. If the patch is bigger than the ear, however, check the guinea pig over for mites. Mites and cause baldness and flaky skin. If he does have mites, bathe him once a day in mite removal shampoo (FOR guinea pigs!) until all signs are completely gone. You might want to take him to the vet for further help. But I wouldn't worry too much, almost all guinea pigs are bald behind their ears. Good luck. =)
What is the most insightful thing your child has said to you?
One of my boys has always been of the daredevil persuasion. He once broke his arm by riding his big wheel off a picnic table—right after I told him to get off the picnic table before he fell of & broke his arm…He was also the kid that spent the night with a friend and came home the next day and wouldn’t let me hug him…turns out he’d had a bicycle wreck & it hurt to breathe because he’d crashed into some bushes & the handlebars collided with his chest. Even the doctor told him he was very lucky not to have damaged his spleen.He had go carts, dirt bikes & eventually cars. Anything with a motor made me cringe. I was convinced that he was the one I had to worry about getting “that call” from the police or hospital to tell me that he’d been in an accident.There are so many more stories I could tell, but needless to say, he was one I had to keep a constant eye on. Even now, as an adult, I worry about some of the stuff he does, but he has matured leaps & bounds over what he used to be like.Well, when he was around 15 or 16 yrs old, we were talking about some of his escapades. I was trying to get him to see my point of view so he would understand WHY some of the things he’s done worried me. I was exasperated to the point of giving up on the conversation after telling him (and crying while i did so), “Do you not realize that some of the things you do/have done could result in you being KILLED?!” (damn, i remember this as if it were just yesterday; pardon me while i compose myself all over again.)In one short sentence, he made ME see his side of it:“Well, wouldn’t you rather I died doing something I loved?”i know some of you are not going to agree with either of our reactions to it, but i had to stop & think for a few minutes before i said anything else.In light of the fact that no one knows when they are going to die, I had to agree that when I die, I would prefer it to be while I was doing something I loved to do. This is not to say that I condone being wreckless & throwing caution to the wind, thinking we’re going to live forever…but damn, his words really hit me hard.About all I could do at that point was to have him promise me that he would be more careful! We still reminisce, 15+ yrs later, about that conversation. I found his words to be so profound that I actually loosened up more and started learning to enjoy MY life more. What good is life if you don’t enjoy yourself?
Why are pigs kept in mud if they are very clean animals?
As Katie Bjorkman and Claire Jordan said, pigs roll in water and mud, even making mudholes to both cool off and to protect themselves from biting flies. In fact, they don’t have many sweat glands. The only place they have sweat glands is on the crescent of their nose, called the rooting disc.Pigs are some of the cleanest of barnyard animals. They will defecate as far from their food as possible. When penned, boars have one spot they choose to urinate. Sows, on the other hand, are relatively indiscriminate about urinating, except that, again, they do away from their feeding area.All pigs despise being dirty, more so than any other barnyard animal. They are meticulous about cleanliness. But, unlike us, they don’t consider earth and mud that to be dirty so long as it is clear of their urine and feces.While miniature pigs do have a great problem with dry skin, usually due to their artificial diets, most farm breeds and those in the wild do not. Their skin oil is very refined and repels and sheds dirt. A pig will wallow in a mud hole, and, when he dries off, the dirt flakes off his skin, leaving him very clean. The same is true even of pigs who have been rescued from bad conditions. Within a few hours to days, their skin will naturally shed dirt, even fecal, accumulations.Again, as Claire Jordan mentioned, if penned in small dirt lots, if the lots aren’t regularly maintained, their sharp hooves churn the dirt, mixing their fecal material and urine with the earth to make a fetid swamp. The nature of their feces is to act much like bentonite, a mineral sometimes used to create a ground water barrier. If you wind up with a fetid swamp for a pen, a bobcat can easily scoop out the slop because, a few feet down, the earth is solid. Then refill with a clean soil, sand, gravel mixture and henceforth keep up on your husbandry — daily mucking out of their lots. And never keep pigs in small pens. One pig needs at least an outside run of 8′x48′ with an indoor house of a minimum of 8′x 12′, preferably wood floored or with heavy rubber mats over concrete, then a deep bed of straw over that.