Beginner mistakes as first time owners

My flimsy defence is I was 11/12 when I got my first pigs but oh boy, here goes..*takes a deep breath!*

-I didn't think to double check the genders of my first 2 pigs
-Said 2 pigs then produced 3 babies which luckily I managed to sex properly but for some unknown reason I still took the stores word that the second piggy was female so I waited for him to give birth while left with the adult and 3 female babies...
-By the time I realised my error mummy pig and 1 baby were pregnant.
-I misinterpreted dominance behaviours which were complicated/confused by pregnancy and nursing and separated them all into single cages for a little while until everything settled down and I had a go at bonding them all again (minus Fudge who I now knew to be male)
-I thought a 100cm cage was big enough as a permanent home
-I fed a cheap muesli food
-I put 3 boars together and it ended exactly as you would imagine
-Not sure if this one counts but I went to a show and saw what I thought was a piggy with mites, this beautiful piggy was my second satin pig Honey who had hair missing on her back, older and wiser I know this was the first sign of her osteodystrophy but in my ignorance I figured I would buy her and make her mites better and get a cheap, pretty pig, wrong! I paid for regular, expensive dental treatments until we lost her to the repeated aneasthetics.
-I regularly gave them unhealthy and unsafe treats from pet stores like the dried corn, salt and mineral licks, those weird puffy donut things they used to do, seed sticks etc.

That's probably not even everything :doh: but that's what I remember off the top of my head.
 
I got a Guinea pig and a rabbit on the advice of a pet shop! That was 20 years ago now when I was a 13 year old with no Internet and had no reason to doubt what we were told! Thankfully they wouldn't go near each other so we went back and got them each a mate of their own kind šŸ˜£
 
Like @Eriathwen at 12 I had a miss sexed pair - my 12 was a lot longer ago though! :fog:
I fed muesli
My hutch was too small
I put them out on wet grass
Dispite me they somehow survived for 5 and 6 years.

Moving on 40 years I took the healthiest guinea pig the vet thought she'd ever seen for a check up because he'd gone quiet and was acting out of character - thanks sulky/grumpy Spike :doh:

I'm sure I've made many more, but with the help of this forum I think I'm doing a lot better!
 
My first piggie came with a large rabbit! I gave them a home as the boy over the road was bored with them. I had to split them up immediately, the little piggie had hardly any hair on her back by being constantly mounted. I kept them in separate hutches and looked after both well but never thought they could have a companion. It was 50 years ago so there wasnā€™t the knowledge as there is now
 
A shockingly tiny cage, a boar on his own, sawdust, muesli mix, an upgrade to an only kinda tiny cage and 2 years after I got him and with the internet being a thing and making him a massive c & c, I got him two baby friends. Surprisingly, all 3 were fine for another few years till one of the younger ones died then I got another two boars. Again all was fine until my darling Bob died of old age at 9 yrs. I have no idea how he lasted longer than any piggie I've had since, even with my ignorance. I was also INCREDIBLY lucky to have had so many boars get on for so long and only had my first boar falling out after almost 15 years of having no clue about what was supposed to happen with more than two.
 
Technically I'm not a first time piggy owner, but it certainly feels like it since there's so much more information available, and I'm not sure I'll not make the mistakes again. (First mistake: accidentally press "post reply" far too early, so two posts instead of one. Stupid touchscreen).
  • Thought that it'd be really easy to keep their cage tidy. Noooope. They manage to make it look like a hurricane's been through the cage within two minutes of me cleaning it.
  • Thought that guinea pigs are naturally nervous and therefore won't approach anything new in the cage. It would be safe to leave the dustpan filled with poo and old hay for 2 seconds while I went to get a new bin bag. Resounding bang, turn to see dustpan turned over, poo everywhere, all my hard work totally wasted, and Arthur sat on it while Merlin's dragging the dustpan brush around. My guinea pigs love anything new and will be on it in two seconds. They don't seem to be afraid of anything.
  • Completely panicked when I saw Arthur stretched out on his side in the middle of the cage, not moving, with his eyes wide open. He had to have died! My panicked noise scared him awake and was met with the most disgruntled look.
  • Completely panicked when I saw Arthur stretched out on his side in the middle of the cage, not moving, with his eyes shut. Definitely had to have died this time! My panicked noise scared him awake and was met with yet another disgruntled look.
  • Thought that they'd leave the meadow hay cookie in the hay tray and keep the cage tidy. They, of course, pulled it out and proceeded to shred it. Still working out how to get embedded hay cookie out of fleece.
  • Thought that, finally, I had got them to eat cucumber. Started to celebrate, and then remembered that it was me who had taken the bites out of the pieces in an attempt to make it look less poisonous and more appealing. Think I'm just going to have to give in when it comes to them liking it.
 
Not with Guinea pigs, but first time hamster owner many years ago. Little boy, took him to the vets thinking he had lumps ā€˜down belowā€™......aannnddd well you can guess whatā€™s coming lol. Was told he was in fine fettle and was quite a well endowed boy :yahoo: whoops, never made that mistake again x
 
VickiA said:
I thought a patch of crust on one Piggyā€™s nose was a growth or ringworm and rushed her to the vet. It washed off with a cotton wool swab and hibiscrub. It was pellet mush from a messy eater.
Click to expand...
Mine is similar...
Jennyā€™s nose was very pale. I was worried. I asked a question on a well known guinea pig forum... :whistle: There was a muttering about heart failure...

...the vet wiped it off with a cotton bud... ink from the newspaper lining the haytray!
 
My biggest mistake this time around (I previously had piggies back in the UK almost 20 years ago), was picking up our piggies during a cold spell in March, and moving their outdoor hutch inside 'just for a few nights'.
Three years later and the outdoor hutch is long gone, but the piggies never did make it outside :))
Wouldn't have it any other way of course.
 
I got 3 baby brothers/cousins from the SSPCA, intending to pair one of them with a single foster boar..... So I put them all in together to see who he got on with the best. First time I ever saw guinea pigs fight. Still, the rescue took the single boar back and I ended up with my lovely trio of boars who are still getting along, despite the odds.
 
I thought their little pink cage was big!
Fortunately they were tiny babies and didnā€™t really ā€œoutgrowā€ it, and I added a run shortly after getting Bacon!

I also probably overfed with pellets and veggies (but that was only when they had them)

Itā€™s so weird to think that all of this wasnā€™t long ago... I like to think I give my piggies a good life now, but Iā€™m still learning!
 
As a child we got a 3rd hand male guinea who we put in the hutch with my female rabbit. They both had rabbit muesli. Luckily the rabbit mothered the guniea pig and was always grooming him. The poor rabbit often had what I now know to be boar glue in her fur which we had to cut out.
They both use to go out in the garden run all day in summer, no thought about suddenly having unlimited grass. In winter we'd bring them both into the kitchen for a run round, he enjoyed that.
Poor guy got a huge tumour under his chin, it didn't seem to bother him so we never took him to the vets. Towards the end he had to lift his chin up to run round. I found him dead in the hutch one day with the poor rabbit going frantic. Breaks my heart to this day. Must be 30 years ago.
 
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