Housing

Since becoming a piggie owner in August 2009, I have had many, many cage changes!! The thing that I find is that I want to give them the best I can so I am always thinking of ways to improve their housing.

Trixie Rabbit 120

The first cage I bought was a Trixie Rabbit 120 cage. It is a great example of what an indoor cage should be. It is nice to look at, very solid, and it is much better quality than any other cage I have seen. We also bought the stand for this cage and it fit nicely between the two sofas in the lounge.

This was Sasha and Mabelle's first home. Initially, they were on newspaper, wood shavings and hay however I swapped to towels and fleece within about a month. This was partly down to the sawdust debate, but also down to cost and the amount of waste using shavings creates. I found that shavings had to be changed every couple of days where as fleece lasted much longer.

Savic Park 6

As well as their cage, Sasha and Mabelle also had an indoor run to stretch their legs out in. I bought a Savic Park 6 play pen which was set up in the lounge.

When we found out that he wasn't a sow, Mabelle had to be separated from Sasha. We still wanted them to be able to interact with each other so we had them live side by side in the play pen.

As Sasha's pregnancy went on, we put her into the Trixie 120 cage as we didn't want any escapee babies. After she had them and they had grown a little, we put Sasha and the four little ones back into the play pen next to Mabelle so that he wasn't lonely.

At three weeks old, it was time to separate the boars from the sows. We had a move around in the lounge to create the next cage set up. Mabelle, who had been neutered, was reintroduced to Sasha along with Penelope and Audrey. The four of them were housed in the play pen and Seymour and Mushnik were in the Trixie 120.

C&C - Attempt #1

I decided that, since we were keeping all of the little ones, it would be a good idea to build a C&C cage to house Sasha, Mabelle and the two sows. We built a 3x4 cage on the floor which was going to have a 3x1 hayloft extension, however this never got completed.

Although I liked the space this gave them, it was a nightmare to catch the piggies and took me a long time to clean them out.

And then we realised that Mushnik wasn't a boar as we had first thought. Luckily, we realised in time and she wasn't pregnant. So she joined the herd in the C&C cage and Seymour stayed alone in the Trixie 120 whilst he recovered from his neutering operation.

Trixie Rabbit 150

Once he had fully recovered, we wanted to reintroduced Seymour to Audrey and Mushnik so that we had two sets of trios. As the Trixie 120 isn't big enough to house three, and I wasn't getting on with the C&C set up, I bought two Trixie Rabbit 150 cages.

The cages came with an upper level and a ramp, however it wasn't suitable. The ramp was too steep and came up through a small hole in the floor. Instead, I adapted it by cutting off part of the balcony and making a ramp out of two mesh grids from the C&C cage. I then made a tray to sit in the upper level which was covered with their bedding.

This is used as their kitchen area. All of their food, hay and water is fed upstairs.

When I decided to get Henry, I set the Trixie 120 cage back up for him and he has lived alone in there since. He has been through his neutering operation and is almost in the 'safe' period so will be able to have a girlfriend or two soon.

The Piggy Room

We have cleared out the spare room so that the piggies can have their own piggy proofed room to play in. They are now housed here, rather than in the lounge.

C&C - Attempt #2

After all of the cage variations I have come back to the C&C cages. We now have a four storey 2x5 which houses each group of piggies on the top three floors with the bottom floor being used for storage.

Each level contains two trays, one for fleece bedding and another for a hay box/kitchen area. The front opens fully so that the trays can be removed from the cage for cleaning. The whole cage is on wheels so that it can be moved for easier access around the back. I'm very happy with this set up, all of the pigs have the same amount of space each.

You can read more about my latest cage on my blog post.