Good Morning,
How can I tell if my piggie's vision is getting poor. He is almost 6 y/o (I think) and is doing well so far, but I sometimes I wonder about his vision. I know piggies don't have the best vision to begin with. Just hoping there's a simple way to unofficially test? I would appreciate any tips and tricks!
Hi
No there isn't any eye test but you can have your piggy vet checked for potential old age cataracts etc.
It is not something I would personally recommend these days but the normal red eyes in flash light turn purple with increased fogging of the lens and then blue with a full cataract or nuclear sclerosis in there; just the same as with humans. Only that there is no operation for piggies.
You can clearly see that Mischief's lens is blue in flash light and not as well that her other eye is turning purple and has also started to go by the time this picture was taken. I have a few old flash pictures from the time back when hub and I shared a camera and he forgot to turn the flash off again when he was finished.
The good news is that they adapt and compensate with smell, hearing and touch, which are their much stronger senses anyway. The transition period is the most difficult period; especially if the loss of sight happens very fast - some cataracts or nuclear sclerosis can develop in a matter of days. More often than not, the other eye will follow within weeks or months.
The piggies in my one time dedicated cataract group where able to live a perfectly normal life include shallow ramps covered with a sent retaining material. You can change the layout as long as you do not clean any huts so the aight impeded piggies can smell them and rearrange their mental map.
My Mischief was even able to re-learn to free roam in the garden by building up a new mind map based on scent and touch. And she learned to come to me across several years with a constant vocal update as to whether she was on course or not. If I stood next to the entrance flap of their walk-in run, she would even turn herself in after I had moved the run to a new area.
My 7-8 years old Mali loved following her scent spoor loops in her old age/blind version of zoomies. She passed away from old age two days after creating a new loop, age 8 even though she was blind for all intents and purposes.
Hers is the last video link in the guide. She must have gone round at least 60 times of the course of a couple of hours that time and often crowned it by intentionally bumping into a rather puzzled 3 years old Iola (playing 'dodgems').
- Popcorning
- Zoomies
'Popcorning' (jumping like popping corn), and 'zooming' (running at neck-breaking speed) or any combination of the two are expressions of exuberance and joy of life.
It can be rather puzzling or worrying when you see these behaviours for the first time. They are typical for youngsters but even older and the very old can still indulge in a somewhat more moderate version of them.
The individual style can vary as much as personal dancing styles in humans; they are an expression of personality as well.
Popcorning can even include bouncing off...
