Frustrating Behaviour

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Hops_in_Heaven

Hops_in_Heaven

Junior Guinea Pig
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Two months ago, I adopted Caramel from a friend. I did it as a favour to my friend and also because I was afraid she would be given to someone who doesn't know how to care for guinea pigs if I didn't. I knew I could provide adequate care for her.

Caramel has many bad habits that makes caring for her suck the joy out of owning guinea pigs. She pulls all the hay out of the hay racks until they are empty and scatters it on the floor, which is a problem for my herd when I'm at work. I spent a month trying different methods of holding hay to work around this. She bites the bars non-stop so I have to clip fleece all around the sides of the cage from the bottom to the top, which makes it so I can't see in my cage anymore. This is terrible because I love watching the antics of my herd. She also tramples the other pigs in my herd. If she wants something or is scared, she'll just walk over the other pigs, pushing them down or shoving them out of the way.

I'm going to keep her and take good care of her for the rest of her life because it's the right thing to do. But I resent caring for her. I hate watching her push the others around. I've tried everything to discourage her behaviour. I'm also worried if I ever add any new pigs to my herd, they'd learn all these bad behaviours. Would it be the worse thing if I separated Caramel from the herd into an attached section of the cage, which would allow her to see them? I hate seeing her trample my other pigs and I want to set up the cage the way it used to be before I had to deal with Caramel.
 
Please don’t separate her from the others. Do they complain when she ‘tramples’ them? And what exactly do you mean by that? Does she do it every day?

Are there any boxes she can chew on? One of my boys bites the cage sometimes when I open the fridge, even if they’ve been fed. I’d watch when she does it. Maybe it’s a sign the hay needs topping up...

As for the hay, it’s not a bad habit to pull it out the hay rack. They like to pick out specific hay 🙄 same that they will pick out certain pellets 🤣
 
She steps on their heads when it's convenient and she literally bulldozes them. She takes off and if there's a pig in her way, they get knocked on their side.

The problem with the hay is that she empties five fleece bags of hay halfway into my shift, leaving them with a four hour gap with no hay. And there is a large wooden tunnel as well as willow sticks for chewing on, which she ignores.
 
It's like saying to a child "you're a bit too big and you keep pushing the others around by accident, and you're too messy when you eat, so from now on you're going to have to spend your time in the next room where you can hear them at all times but you can't see them and you can't be near them ever again". Sorry, you said something about being able to see them? But if you're complaining that she's biting the bars all the time and that means you have to clip the fleece very high, does that mean as soon as you'd move her elsewhere you'd stop doing that? Because that would mean at least one of your reasons for moving her would be pointless because you could just unclip the fleece in the first place, otherwise when you moved her you'd be clipping the fleece again and then she wouldn't be able to see her old herd either.
Yes, it's as much her herd as it is yours. If you took her in to simply provide her with adequate care please, find someone else to take her. She deserves better than adequate care, AND with a bit of luck she'll have an owner who doesn't seem to resent her existence in their herd, and who didn't think separating her off from everyone where she would be on her own and unable to see them, was even remotely acceptable. 2 months isn't really that long for her to be settling in properly. I get it, these problems feel like they're never gonna end and you're going to be stuck with this forever but she deserves better than just giving it up now.

Hops_in_Heaven said:
She steps on their heads when it's convenient and she literally bulldozes them. She takes off and if there's a pig in her way, they get knocked on their side.
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I guarantee that if the rest of the herd members had a problem with this, Caramel would know. If they're letting it go, then you need to as well.
 
What you’re describing with the hay is not bad behaviour - it’s normal guinea pig behaviour. Mine strew it literally around the cage, it’s a fact of guinea Pig life. Piggies love rooting through hay and lying in it, so perhaps if you let her have a hay tray to forage and lie in she would enjoy that. And so would the other piggies. Pigs don’t live nice tidy lives like humans, the clue is in their names.

Have you looked at this thread about dominance? Dominance Behaviours In Guinea Pigs
Is she simply exerting dominance behaviours? If so these are again normal.
Or is she just a bit boisterous and fearful hence the fleeing and knocking others out of her way?
If she isn’t fighting with the herd then they are clearly accepting of her behaviour so again I don’t see a problem.

Please don’t separate her for what you as a human consider bad behaviour, that just isn’t fair in a piggy who is following the rules of piggy society.
 
I agree with the other replies, guinea pigs are incapable of naughty behaviour. I was explaining this to a small boy last weekend, he said if a guinea pig bit him that would be naughty. I said no, if a guinea pig bites you then you've been naughty for scaring the guinea pig!
If she's running and colliding with the others its because she's scared, if she's bar biting she's bored, if she's playing with hay getting it on the floor that's perfectly normal. The best plan might be to expand your cage and adapt your set-up so she has more to do? My lot wont chew wooden sticks much either, so I get them hay cubes and carrot cottages and cardboard to chew. And both my cages have a walk-in hay area with lots of floor hay as well as their fleecy areas with hay trays. The hay is still all over the fleece but thats how they like things! If the other piggies objected to Carmel it would have been pretty clear before now, if she's been accepted by the other piggies then she's one of your herd now and you need to try make her happy.
 
I have to say that I currently feel bullied and ganged up on. Don't tell me otherwise. The evidence is clear. Have any of you read any of my past posts? My history here is clear and speaks for itself. I am an amazing guinea pig caretaker and Caramel is receiving the best care possible. Again, don't try to gaslight me. This is an undeniable truth.

Need proof? I have not separated her. I am simply at my wits end. I am speaking from a place of frustration. I am seeing to all of her needs the same as any of YOU. I was actually hoping for some solution to the PROBLEMS.

Again, please see my post history, where I expressed concern regarding the bar biting and was basically met with a 'my pigs do it too, oh well' response. Any time I set foot in my kitchen, she goes off biting and can do it for hours. She does it for hours at night.

Again, I have not done one thing wrong here, so a little respect please. She is with my herd and is receiving the same care as them. In other words, she is being taken care of by the best person in my city.
 
Hops_in_Heaven said:
Two months ago, I adopted Caramel from a friend. I did it as a favour to my friend and also because I was afraid she would be given to someone who doesn't know how to care for guinea pigs if I didn't. I knew I could provide adequate care for her.

Caramel has many bad habits that makes caring for her suck the joy out of owning guinea pigs. She pulls all the hay out of the hay racks until they are empty and scatters it on the floor, which is a problem for my herd when I'm at work. I spent a month trying different methods of holding hay to work around this. She bites the bars non-stop so I have to clip fleece all around the sides of the cage from the bottom to the top, which makes it so I can't see in my cage anymore. This is terrible because I love watching the antics of my herd. She also tramples the other pigs in my herd. If she wants something or is scared, she'll just walk over the other pigs, pushing them down or shoving them out of the way.

I'm going to keep her and take good care of her for the rest of her life because it's the right thing to do. But I resent caring for her. I hate watching her push the others around. I've tried everything to discourage her behaviour. I'm also worried if I ever add any new pigs to my herd, they'd learn all these bad behaviours. Would it be the worse thing if I separated Caramel from the herd into an attached section of the cage, which would allow her to see them? I hate seeing her trample my other pigs and I want to set up the cage the way it used to be before I had to deal with Caramel.
Click to expand...
Sadly the hay thing is standard procedure with my pigs! Have you got a hay tray? I find that helps keep it all contained and the pigs still eat from it.

As for bar biting it’s difficult if you don’t know the reason, could it be fore attention? My Drom does it at feeding time but I just ignore her and don’t give her anything until she stops in case it encourages her, I worry about her breaking her teeth the daft mare! Perhaps more things for her to do if she’s bored? Egg boxes and stuff are a big hit for my lot, keeping them mentally stimulated normally helps with a lot of issues. Hanging toilet roll tubes stuffed and folded over also keep them busy nicely and it’s cheap!

Has Caramel had her eyesight tested? Just thinking ‘cause one of my pigs only has one working eye and she used to do that a LOT when she was young and scared, she does it occasionally now if something spooks her. She used to barrel into everything and everyone! Otherwise I’m guessing she’s just quite dominant, my pigs have moments where they push each other around. Iggy’s the worst for it!

Tbh I wouldn’t separate her, I’d imagine the other pigs would have a lot to say if they were that bothered about it. What’s your cage size and how many pigs are in there? :)
 
Thank you, Cavy Kung-Fu, for not automatically assuming I was scum. Thank you for the respectable reply.

For the hay, I have a two by two c and c area lined with hay bags. It's even a bit lower than the rest of the cage to keep the hay contained. When I had hay racks, Caramel was actually pulling the front of the rack off within minutes of me filling them up. I 3D printed clips to hold the hay racks together and that helped a bit. Now I'm using hay bag made from fleece and they're getting stretched out. Fleece isn't cheap either. I'm just worried because I don't want them to run out of hay when I'm not home.

Caramel bar bites whenever she believes I might feed her. But that means any time I walk past the cage or even if she hears the springs of the bed creak when I roll over at night. She's persistent and can go for hours and I'm scared for her teeth.

The cage is a two by eleven c and c. I have five pigs living in there. I may be able to rearrange the living room to accommodate more space. There's a homemade shelter that can fit three pigs at a time, a hammock, a wooden tunnel, willow chews, a pigloo, a clipped blanket and a corner cave. The fleece pads are handmade.

There are tense moments with Cuddles at times that make me wonder if I need to separate. I have a post about that which I made in the past.

I really, really do love Caramel. I want to help her.
 
I'm sorry that you feel personally attacked, but I'm not going to apologise for saying what I did. There was absolutely nothing in your original post that merited a guinea pig being removed from their herd. All of it was standard behaviour that most of us have seen before and will probably see again. I'm aware now that there's possibly issues between herd members, but I had no way of knowing that in the first place.
I actually tried to check back to your earlier posts, because I remember the original posts about Caramel and I was trying to remember if she'd done this from the start, if it was getting worse, and because I couldn't remember if she'd been on her own before coming to live with you. I don't think she was, didn't her original cagemate pass away? If she'd been kept on her own for some time, however, that might explain quite a few of the "problem behaviours", especially the bar biting. I couldn't go back far enough in your posts to check, though, I'm sorry about that.

Edit: as a note - removing her from the herd will almost definitely not stop her biting the bars or pulling the hay around. It's more likely it'd make the bar biting worse.
 
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With regards to the bar biting, have you thought about getting a sheet of perspex fitted to the front? You can attach it with bulldog clips or similar, then you can still see in, they can see out but she can't get at the bars to chew. This is probably a learned behaviour if she was alone before coming to you, being so highly social she would have been desperate for some form of social interaction and used this as a way of demanding attention, even negative attention being told off is a reward to a lonely piggy.
I have a couple of bulldozer pigs myself and have learned to just roll with it and laugh, I do feel sorry for the others but when they've had enough of the other piggies antics they sure do let them know! (The amount of pee I have to wipe off the walls where they spray at each other to go away is ridiculous lol!) But when I go in at night to do my palliative care boars painkillers they're all snuggled up together like best friends. They understand each others behaviours and don't take it personally, it's just part and parcel of herd life and some piggies can be a little more...exuberant, to try and put it nicely XD
As for the hay, I would definitely try a nice big pile in a corner or in a hay tray, a plastic dog bed is ideal, or a cat litter tray if a dog bed is too large to fit your cage. Being grazing animals it comes more naturally for them to eat off the floor, than browse from a rack so some just yank it all out over the floor. Also different individuals prefer different hay pieces, some of mine prefer the crunchy, stalky bits while some only want the softer bits, this inevitably means there's always going to be some wasted and mucky because no one wants certain bits...i've tried showing them how much I'm spending on their flipping hay but they didn't seem bothered :lol!:
 
@Hops_in_Heaven as a staff member I have reviewed this thread and the posts on it.

I cannot see that you have been bullied or ganged up on and no one has expressed any views that you are, as you put it, “scum”.

If you genuinely believe this then you should press the “report” button and report any behaviour you consider to be unacceptable. The whole staff team would then review the relevant posts and consider any action required.
 
Well, Lorcan, a better person would own up to their mistake of making wrongful assumptions. I'm big enough to admit that I could've written more, though that's why a person can ask me questions. In the future, I highly recommend asking questions before launching into lecture mode.

Caramel had never been to the vet before. A two by two c and c section of my cage was bigger than her cage. She was left as a child's pet and therefore a child's responsibility. Her little fleece house she came with was pink and lavender at first, but it was brown and grey when I got it. I think this behaviour is all from the previous home. She is better off with me.

Thank you, VickiA, for invalidating my feelings. If I feel I have been mistreated, it's perfectly reasonable. I thought maybe I could mention it so that we can move forward without continuing to do so. You know, working it out like mature people.

Sigh. Thanks for those who were polite. Now I'm still at a loss and I feel like a fool for thinking I belonged here. I'll work this out on my own.

Mods, feel free to shut this down.
 
As @VickiA has previous stated - Upon reviewing this thread I cannot see any incidence of bullying or ganging up. People have offered opinions and ideas.
As far as I am concerned matter is closed.
This thread remains closed as tempers have frayed and nothing more of benefit will come of leaving it open.
 
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