I can't believe it!

And now we've got little Kiwi in with Sage's herd! Gosh Kiwi is sweet. Nobody is really paying her any mind, they just snorfled and sniffed her a bit and proceeded to work on the hay pile. Looks like another super easy bonding.

Meanwhile with Flora and Pumpkin everybody is making that rumble-chirp stress sound I've heard during most bondings. A lot of dominant personalities swirling around in there. Nothing bad though.
 

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Wowzers! Do you have a mansion out there in AZ? I can barely house my two boars let alone an entire herd of sows! Next house I buy (hopefully with the gf) will have my gaming room coupled with the piggies room! Unless the gf wants sows then we have to keep them away from my boars..

I should read through your thread further but are all your piggys female? Any neutered boars among the mix?
 
Wowzers! Do you have a mansion out there in AZ? I can barely house my two boars let alone an entire herd of sows! Next house I buy (hopefully with the gf) will have my gaming room coupled with the piggies room! Unless the gf wants sows then we have to keep them away from my boars..

I should read through your thread further but are all your piggys female? Any neutered boars among the mix?
Haha, I wish! We're in a decent-sized apartment, I got special permission to keep these piggies here, had to have a tussle with their corporate lawyers though. What I did is build a three-story C&C cage / shelf thingy along the living room wall. It fits a lot of piggies in a fairly compact way.

I've got mostly girls but there's one big black-and-white neutered boar named Clover. 😄 And the little guy I just got a few days ago, Dandelion, is getting neutered in January. He's the only pig who is not part of today's bonding extravaganza.
 

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Well! Juniper, Rosemary & Co. had been nothing but sweet to each other in the bonding pen, so I went ahead and moved them to their enclosure.

The shift in environment frightened Rosemary and she suddenly went berserk! She started running around biting the butts of innocent piggies and ripping out fur! Everyone was running around screaming in terror, it was nuts. 😱

Thankfully, Clover intervened and calmed her down. I'm not sure what he said to her but they had a long exchange. Then he laid next to her with his chin resting on her for a while. Now he's following her everywhere keeping her in check. Very interesting behavior.
 

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Poor Peach had a rough day yesterday. She poked herself in the eyeball with a sharp bit of hay and it got stuck in there. The vet removed it and checked her eye with contrast dye to see how bad it was. She's got a big blistery-looking cornea ulceration. Thankfully she is expected to make a full recovery. In the meantime she's being given metacam and antibiotic eye drops and looking like a prizefighter. Oh Peach.
 

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Oh, and something nice - the vet's office gave us a pretty substantial discount. We agreed to pay $220 and then they quietly only charged us $170. They've given us free nail clips in the past but this was REALLY lovely of them.

They also said they'd chat with their inventory guy about getting me a better price on bulk vitamin C biscuits when I asked. Alternately they let me know I might have success contacting Oxbow directly. I've switched to only giving half a biscuit per pig to save money (I figure they get the other 50% of their vitamin C from pellets and veggies no problem) but it's still one of their more expensive habits.
 
Love the one eyed look. I get that when my boys are like what is this loony toon doing now!

Poor peach 😫
 
What an incredible number of guinea pigs, feeding time must sound amazing! I am very happy with three. Definitely my limit.
 
Phone is dying, but we narrowed things down considerably - x-ray is showing either a uterine tumor or a big bladder stone. Going to ultrasound the area next to determine which. Either way it should be operable. 🤗
 
There's a bit of a wait for scans and tests (I heard several protesting birds) so we've left Penny at the vet until they call us back...
 

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FABULOUS news. It's neither cancer nor a huge bladder stone, Pennyroyal's got a bad, sludgey bladder infection with a lot of inflammation. Still serious but a much better prognosis and no need for surgical intervention, we're treating with metacam and big doses of antibiotics. She already looks brighter since starting the medications.
 

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Bonus pigtures of Pumpkin and Flora. I've decided Flora is actually a Peruvian who has had an, uhm, interesting haircut. She looks like a tribble.

I've learned Flora's prior name was Canary, and this is because she makes LOUD BIRD NOISES. She just sits there and sings her heart out. Often at 4 AM, but any other time is good too. I've never even heard of a singing guinea pig, but here she is.

Pumpkin is a chill girl, still getting to know her, but she likes pets and hanging out with the crowd. Such a pretty face.
 

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Pennyroyal still seems to be responding quickly to the antibiotics. 🤗 Peach's eye already looks much better. And Dandelion is SO FUNNY.

He likes to play "chase" with my hand. When I catch him, I tickle his chest and he makes happy noises. He runs in and out of hideys, and sometimes he reverses it and starts chasing me. He will play this game basically forever without getting tired of it.

Dandelion also plays with my dog Belgium through the bars - he starts zipping back and forth and squeaking, the dog starts jumping this way and that and barking, they both fire each other up and create a noisy feedback loop. (I strongly discourage the dog from actually touching the cages/piggies, and there are cage lids.)

He'll also go round and round and round and round in circles if you sort of spin your hand about him. 😂 What a goof.
 

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Oh my goodness, this morning has been chaos.

I was wrapping up giving Peach her medicine and my dog would NOT shut up! I was shushing and shushing him and he just kept barking and barking. Then I finally looked where he was looking and LOOSE PIG! 😱😱😱

I had caught Peach up by simply picking up the fleece tunnel she was in, and then set the tunnel aside. Well tiny little Daisy must have been tucked in there too, and I didn't even notice. She apparently hopped off the coffee table and went exploring while I was giving Peach her eyedrops...

Noted, always check socks and tunnels for additional tiny occupants. My goodness. I'm glad my dog told me about it, otherwise Daisy might have been doodling around on the floor for hours. She could have been squished! 😖 She looks so smug about it, too.

Not a whole minute after Daisy was recaptured I noticed that Apple had taken a haypoke to her upper left eyeball, virtually identical to what Peach had done. For real, Apple?!

Our exotic veterinary hospital is 24/7 except for holidays, just my luck. Since I'd just seen the vet do it and already had the antibiotic eye drops and metacam, I bit the bullet and removed the hay myself. It came out in one piece and didn't leave any bits behind, and I washed out her eye thoroughly to be sure. The degree of corneal ulceration looks similar to what Peach had so I'm not too worried. I'll get her a follow-up if her eye is not looking much better within 24 hours. But I think we're good. Which is good, because the emergency animal hospital here charges like, triple the rates. 😬

I'll see if I can buy another bottle of these eye drops from the vet in case someone else decides to jab their eyeball on a holiday. While I'm thinking of it, are there any other first-aid items or medications I should have on hand? I have styptic powder, big and small syringes, and critical care, but that's about it. I'm curious what else to get for supportive care in an emergency while waiting for a vet, or for dealing with minor mishaps at home. Is leftover metacam (the refrigerated kind) any good? I'll ask the vet...

I'm not an advocate of subbing home care for the vet, but from now on I think I will attempt to treat uncomplicated/straightforward hay-in-eyeball events myself first, since it's apparently going to be a regular thing. If I buckle up and do it myself, I can potentially get the irritant out immediately and minimize the damage, even if we do end up at the vet later anyway to check it. (I wish I'd plucked the hay out of Peach's eye sooner and then taken her in, but I didn't know it was so easy.)

I feel like the worst piggy mother right now, ugh. 😅 I can't believe I didn't notice Daisy in the sock. I've got two pirate pigs, and I'm hoping it's just a coincidence and not that I gave them bad pointy hay or something. Ugh!

Anyway, here are the cuties, Apple and Daisy.
 

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Look at that piggy eyeball, it's almost like new! Hopefully Apple's yucky eye heals just as fast.

And what progress Peach has made, when I got her she was a very nervous pig, you could barely look at her or she'd run away. Now she actually enjoys having a snuggle with me after her medicine.
 

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Well, we're back from our double vet visit for Dandelion and Pepper. We're having some good luck.

For starters, Pepper's insides actually seem to be perfectly fine based on her exam and x-rays! It took some investigating to figure out why she is losing her hair then. The vet searched and searched and eventually found one single mite. The vet said she probably grooms herself so well that it made it very hard to detect. So instead of surgery we're having a simple round of mite treatments.

I'll be checking the rest of them for mites tomorrow in the light. Hopefully nobody else has it, the vet said there's a decent chance the mites were hanging out on only Pepper. But now that she's being treated, the mites are going to jump ship, so I've got her appropriately separated. Which was a tough call, as she's the herd leader and keeping her apart for six weeks might disrupt the hierarchy. Hopefully they will accept her back into the herd without too much upheaval...

The other bit of good luck - Dandelion happened to be coming down with an upper respiratory infection and we caught it super early. We were there to discuss getting him neutered, but then he started sneezing and panting. The excitement of the appointment made it more obvious that he had symptoms. So he's on antibiotics now.

Dandelion was a hoot. He wrestled the vet tech like a champ while he was getting his temperature taken and kicked the thermometer across the room. Then he wrestled the vet all the way through his exam and almost flipped off the table. He loves being petted, but he certainly does not like when people prod and squeeze him rudely. He was so exhausted after all that resisting that when we put him back in his carrier he just flopped over dramatically and went to sleep. Made the vet laugh.
 

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Hiya. I’ve mite treated my piggies three times and I’ve never separated them. Can you just mite treat all of them? I don’t think having mites should be a reason the break their bond. Glad that Pepper is ok otherwise and you caught dandelions infection early.
 
Well, we're back from our double vet visit for Dandelion and Pepper. We're having some good luck.

For starters, Pepper's insides actually seem to be perfectly fine based on her exam and x-rays! It took some investigating to figure out why she is losing her hair then. The vet searched and searched and eventually found one single mite. The vet said she probably grooms herself so well that it made it very hard to detect. So instead of surgery we're having a simple round of mite treatments.

I'll be checking the rest of them for mites tomorrow in the light. Hopefully nobody else has it, the vet said there's a decent chance the mites were hanging out on only Pepper. But now that she's being treated, the mites are going to jump ship, so I've got her appropriately separated. Which was a tough call, as she's the herd leader and keeping her apart for six weeks might disrupt the hierarchy. Hopefully they will accept her back into the herd without too much upheaval...

The other bit of good luck - Dandelion happened to be coming down with an upper respiratory infection and we caught it super early. We were there to discuss getting him neutered, but then he started sneezing and panting. The excitement of the appointment made it more obvious that he had symptoms. So he's on antibiotics now.

Dandelion was a hoot. He wrestled the vet tech like a champ while he was getting his temperature taken and kicked the thermometer across the room. Then he wrestled the vet all the way through his exam and almost flipped off the table. He loves being petted, but he certainly does not like when people prod and squeeze him rudely. He was so exhausted after all that resisting that when we put him back in his carrier he just flopped over dramatically and went to sleep. Made the vet laugh.
So glad that Dandelion knows how a piggy should behave at a vet.
I’m fairly sure that on one occasion Merab swore at a vet for sticking a thermometer up her bum.
She was such a quiet and gentle lady too ( Merab, that is)

Glad you’re getting some good luck too.
 
Hiya. I’ve mite treated my piggies three times and I’ve never separated them. Can you just mite treat all of them? I don’t think having mites should be a reason the break their bond. Glad that Pepper is ok otherwise and you caught dandelions infection early.

I'll call the vet back and ask about that option.
 
Plan B! The vet says I can weigh everybody at home and get their dosages for mite treatments. It is a bit past time to weigh them again anyway.

I'm thinking for this to be worthwhile, I should probably treat all 27. If I treat only Pepper's herd there's nothing stopping the mites from hopping to the next cage.

Then we'll hopefully never have to worry about mites again. I'm banned from picking up any more piggies right now (lol) but if I ever do bring anyone else home, I'll comb through them extra good to make sure we don't add the mites back in. I know firsthand what they look like now / where to look. (Shoulders/behind the ears!)
 
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