A very piggish Piggy

[NMPygmyMom]

Hello.

I'm looking for housing help...

I have a young male in the Amazon brand of the Midwest enclosure - I think this is the link for it... https://smile.amazon.com/AmazonBasi...ds=guinea+pig+cage&qid=1634440533&sr=8-4&th=1

(So it's canvas bottom, 24" by 48" with wire walls and open top. When I adopted him he was in a smaller cage approximately 20" by 36" with plastic bottom and fully enclosed wire top. He was fully in paper litter.)

I had a pair of females before and had them in two adjoined Midwest cages.

In both cases - the girls before and him now, fleece liners, corner potty boxes, and cozy beds and hidey-houses.

What I'm struggling with is that this little boy is an absolute pig - lol.
He has little regard for using his litter box - sometimes very consistent, other times not at all.
He gladly pees in his cozy spots and sleeps in it. He poops in his food bowl.

My two girls together were half as messy as he is alone. :-(

I pick up after him two, three times a day and launder his fleece liners and bedding twice a week. And that doesn't feel often enough.

At this point I am rather frustrated. I would probably be better off to have him fully on paper bedding to have less washing. But I don't want to put him back in a fully enclosed cage with smaller dimensions so that I can have a plastic tray again.

I would love to find a plastic bin of the right dimensions that I could insert into the wire walls, just deep enough to accommodate paper bedding (perhaps 5" high?).

I hate that he is an only pig, and would love to work toward adopting another male in the future (as I did when I adopted my two females separately and eventually worked to have them live together). But at this point he is so messy and so much upkeep, I can't imagine adding another. I think having him back on paper litter will ease the workload a bit and make that more feasible.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for reading my long post and for any help you can provide!

 

[Tigermoth]

He sounds totally normal in terms of his love of peeing anywhere and everywhere. I think you got lucky before!

In terms of a bin, have you looked at C&C cages? They use a sheet of plastic (called Correx in the uk, not sure if it has another name in the US) that you cut and tape to the dimensions you need. I bought mine online. Could that be an option for you?

I also use a large tray in my cage for hay. They soil it a lot but that can come out for washing and keeps the area underneath clean.

 

[Piggies&buns]

I agree - he sounds normal
Guinea pigs generally cannot be litter trained - the will pee and poop everywhere.
Changing fleece liners is usually a twice a week thing as well as poop picking a couple of times a day. I have a boar pair and they are on disposable bedding and that is how often I clean

He would benefit hugely from having a friend but if you get him a boar friend then your cage size needs to be doubled as a boar pair needs a much bigger space. The cage he is in currently is the smallest size for a single piggy to be kept in
Given his age (I think I saw on your other post that he is 5 months old) bonding two teen boars can be harder due to the hormones so you might want to consider neutering him and bonding with a sow once he is six weeks post op and safe. Bonding with another boar is possible particularly if you have a rescue centre who offer dating so he can find his own character compatible friend. Bonding boars is a one time thing - put them on neutral territory for several hours and see it through to conclusion whether that be success or failure (in which case they must be permanently separated).

 

[Black piggies]

You were very lucky before. The poop management can be a lot, twice daily poo picking and very frequent change of wet fleece pads from hideys. I think it's a chore, but you get used to it. Hope you can get him a friend soon.

 

[Bill & Ted]

I’ve never had a litter trained guinea pig either, but Hector and Kiki do go back in their cage to pee if they are having a runaround the lounge

 

[NMPygmyMom]

Thank you all so much for your responses!

I'm glad to know he's a normal level of piggish, lol, and that I was just lucky with Ginger and Twiggy. I had wondered if it was a fluke or if it had to do with being male versus female.

I had heard of C&C cages, and I think that's the way I'll go when I take the step of getting Katani a companion. My girls lived in two adjoined Midwest cages, so their living area was approximately 47" x 48". I planned to have at least that same cage area again for two.

In the interim, I will look into custom making a tray for the present enclosure. I believe correx and coroplast are the same thing? If so, I have access to that in home improvement stores.

I will do lots of reading on the forum about adopting a second piggie. I had great success with my girls, but it sounds like it could be trickier with males. I do not have any guinea pig rescues in my area or even the entire state, from what I can find, so it may be a challenging venture.