Advice needed - chewing bars

BaileyM

BaileyM

New Born Pup
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Ok. I need some advice on how to handle this right now. Bailey seems to be a happy pig. She eats (LOVES her veggies) and drinks, runs around wheeking, while hates being picked up, seems to enjoy cuddles (loves to sit in my daughter's hood of her sweatshirt).
We have a "playpen" for her in our main living space (regular cage is in daughters room). She spends a lot of time in there as well as having time to free roam. Lately though she is trying to shove her nose through the playpen bars and/or chewing on them (she never does this in her cage). She has lots of hay, toys, room to run. How can I discourage her from chewing on the bars or shoving her nose through? I'm worried about her hurting herself.

I know she needs a friend, and we are looking into that, but unfortunately we are on a state of emergency, lock down/stay at home order at the moment and we cannot get her a friend right now, until at least the end of the month.
 
Could it be she wants to free roam or return to her cage when she does this? That’s the only thing I can think of. Otherwise ignore is the way to go if she has enough hay in her pen.
 
My boar has 2 girl neighbours (newly acquired during lockdown) because one loves him but top girl hates his guts so living together won't work. The only pig that chews the bars is Louise (who loves him) and I think she would quite like to get through into George's enclosure. My pigs don't chew bars for human attention (or even pig attention) they chew to get through!
Your girl might want out to explore... and to be honest she might be thinking there's another pig out there somewhere to find, because she's not to know. Or she might just want to go back to the cage like Siikibam suggests. It is tricky when they're on their own - George was alone for over 2 months and we were lucky to find our girls but although they were rescue pigs we were not able to do the usual 'dating' which would have immediately shown Zara wasn't going to play ball!
 
My boys chew their cage bars and it drives me insane. They do it in anticipation of food. Is there something out there she wants?
 
...or does she need something wooden to get her teeth into to help keep them down?
 
Definitely not that, she has lots of wood to chew on, and tons of hay
 
Maybe you could look into something like Piggy Bedspreads. Basically it is fleece that fits snugly over the whole cage including the sides. Someone had suggested this to me as well, basically cover the bars with something soft so they can't bite the bars.
 
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