Cold weather and indoor pigs- a bit of advice!

PigglePuggle

PigglePuggle

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Just thought I would post this as some things for other indoor piggy owners to check on...
As night time temperatures are starting to get cold (5 degrees in Liverpool last night!) if your house is like mine a bit old and draughty, please make sure you consider what temperature your piggy room gets to at night when you are snuggled up under your duvet, and think if your piggies need a bit of extra heating on or a Snugglesafe heat pad or two!
Also this is really important- if you are loading up the piggy cage with warm fleecy tunnels and houses and snuggle sacks, make sure you check these daily for poops or if they are soaked with wee! Tallulah and Ollie had a full cage clean and all clean fleecy furniture at 8pm Tuesday night, by 8am today Thursday all this fleecy luxury was a bit poop filled and very soggy with wee and needed washing... if I hadnt checked they would have been very cold and damp and miserable tonight!
If they are spending more time snuggled away, they are also spending more time weeing and pooping in their beds, and helpfully doubling your piggy laundry load because piggies like to keep us busy :)
 
PigglePuggle said:
Just thought I would post this as some things for other indoor piggy owners to check on...
As night time temperatures are starting to get cold (5 degrees in Liverpool last night!) if your house is like mine a bit old and draughty, please make sure you consider what temperature your piggy room gets to at night when you are snuggled up under your duvet, and think if your piggies need a bit of extra heating on or a Snugglesafe heat pad or two!
Also this is really important- if you are loading up the piggy cage with warm fleecy tunnels and houses and snuggle sacks, make sure you check these daily for poops or if they are soaked with wee! Tallulah and Ollie had a full cage clean and all clean fleecy furniture at 8pm Tuesday night, by 8am today Thursday all this fleecy luxury was a bit poop filled and very soggy with wee and needed washing... if I hadnt checked they would have been very cold and damp and miserable tonight!
If they are spending more time snuggled away, they are also spending more time weeing and pooping in their beds, and helpfully doubling your piggy laundry load because piggies like to keep us busy :)
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I use snugglesafes for all my elderly or frail piggies and heat them accordingly to how cold the night is. I also place a fleece over the cages on the window side on freezing nights; it makes about another degree difference from the cold air pooling at the foot of the window.

An upturned old small soft dog basket will make a wonderful snuggly tent for your piggies, too!
 
I just thought I'd post this because the weather has suddenly got very nippy on cold nights, and our fleecy beds were soaked with pee this morning!
I omitted to mention the "incident" while poop scooping the cage after removing all the damp fleecy beds this morning when darling Tallulah-oollah ran UP MY FLEECY PYJAMA LEG while I was knelt in the cage cleaning up! Poor girl might have been a bit chilly for 10 minutes but this went even beyond the toe licking episode in terms of weirdness and being over familiar with the hoomans :) if you have never experienced the joy of a skinny pig in your trousers I would say it perhaps only has appeal to a very limited and unusual type of person...
I am also thinking of a blanket over the cage as my house is quite open plan and there is quite a draft from the back door :)
 
Mine have a hooded pet carrier with a puppy pad on the bottom, then a piece of vet bed and topped with a ton of hay. All covered by a fleecy blanket. They snuggle in there at night and it stays dry as the vetbed wicks to the puppy pad.
 
When do you start using the snuggle safes? During the week my heating is only on between 6am-8am then comes back on 6.30pm - 12am as we are out all day so have been worrying about the girls and how to keep them warm enough.
 
Alisa3114 said:
When do you start using the snuggle safes? During the week my heating is only on between 6am-8am then comes back on 6.30pm - 12am as we are out all day so have been worrying about the girls and how to keep them warm enough.
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Could you not adjust your heating to have it come on for a short period in the middle of the day to take the chill off?
Ultimately though it comes down to the temperature. Pigs like to be kept at around 18-20 degrees anything below 15 and they can get chilled, so put snugglesafes in dependent on those temperatures. It may be that you need to pop a thermometer in the room, perhaps on the weekend if you are home to see what is happening so it can guide your decision.
 
I always keep my central heating on 15c all year round. I was told it is more economical, this way, you're boiler isn't having to work as hard. Plus you'll never get burst pipes after them being frozen. I have a combo boiler with thermostat 👍

I will tweak it up a bit if it's very cold
 
SkyPipDotBernie said:
I always keep my central heating on 15c all year round. I was told it is more economical, this way, you're boiler isn't having to work as hard. Plus you'll never get burst pipes after them being frozen
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Yep. I’m home a lot so my heating is always coming on but i have been told by my plumber uncle that leaving it off for many hours during the day isn’t great as the temp drops too much and then has to work harder to warm back up. Better to have it come on for an hour or so every few hours to keep an even temperature throughout.
 
Piggies&buns said:
Yep. I’m home a lot so my heating is always coming on but i have been told by my plumber uncle that leaving it off for many hours during the day isn’t great as the temp drops too much and then has to work harder to warm back up. Better to have it come on for an hour or so every few hours to keep an even temperature throughout.
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Yea exactly what I was told aswell. Also it stops exterior walls getting too cold and causing moldy wallpaper and walls
 
I have invested in some foam rubber insulating tape to put round my draughty back door too, its something that just occured to me one cold night that my grandparents used to use! My house is so old that the doorways are not standard sizes and my back door frame is 5ft 10 tall and 2ft 4 inches wide... so the door itself is a bit of fix up where the previous owner has roughly hacked a standard size door to fit, with half inch gaps some places and scrapes the frame in others! I am disproportionately excited about the 2 different sizes and shapes of foam rubber tape I've bought :)
 
I have popped their fleece hides and beds back in the other night as we have not put the heating on yet... I cover their c & c over the top and down the sides when it gets colder too... I work from home so if it ever gets chilly then i will pop the heating on for an hour and keep this to myself :whistle::whistle:
 
As our last house was freezing at night I always put a tiny oil filled heater in the same room as the c and c at night, from this time of year until Spring. I also have a little temperature gauge beside their cage. Tried to use snuggle sacks but they always lie on them not in them, and they don't cuddle up together.
 
We have a central heater throughout the house so the temperature is always constant throughout inside the house, but I still moved my piggies’ cages away from the windows and doors and put them near the center of the house where the walls face inside the house.

I put an extra cage near the window for my boy Finn so he can view the outside when the sun comes out but when the sun goes down, he needs to go back to his warm house. Finn is an outdoor enthusiast and popcorns continuously when he goes outside in nice weather during spring, summer, and fall. Lara on the other hand hides in her hidy when the sun comes out but she is still moved closer to the window during the day to view the sun. I don’t like leaving Lara out of daily activities so she does what Finn is doing.
 
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