My suspicions about P@H! + tale of pet piggies!

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Today i went on a visit to pets at home to see if they had any new rescued piggies (they didnt which i was in a way pleased to see, but gutted i couldnt rehome a piggy!) - and i ended up looking at the regular piggies they stock, and couldnt help but notice how feminine and quite largely PREGNANT one of the 'male' piggies looked, it was quite noticably large which lead to my concern, mainly due to the fact that they are only a couple of months old when stocked at [email protected] then asked one of the shop floor assistants if they were meant to be male or female piggies. I was informed that they were all male and females were only kept at the back of the store, I asked them if they were sure the large piggies was a male, and they claimed to be sure...they then checked the sex of the guinea and turns out i was correct! and it got moved to the back of the store!
- Less than impressive!

Later today, I then took a trip to see what piggies a store in Lichfield had in stock, they had 12-13 in total. Split into two average sized cages (under-sized for 6 and 7 in each). When i asked if they had any sows in stock (to purchase a cage-mate for our other sow), they guy told me 'yeah half a dozen' and i asked which cage they were in, he told me..then my girlfriend picked one she liked and the guy came over to get it. He said he would check the sex before he sold it to us, and before our very eyes, he sexed a little boar! He then began to sex the rest..and found sows and boars mixed in each of the two cages! We eventually walked out disgusted without a potentially-pregnant guinea and will instead be looking to rehome another in the near future from somewhere else!

Whatever are pet shops thinking! mixing guinea pigs together, and at such young ages it is ridiculous!
 
That's awful. It's good that they were at least able to sex them, but why didn't they do that in the beginning? There might be some pregnant ones, there probably will be fights over the girls, but as long as they make a quick buck it doesn't matter. People never cease to amaze me.

Kimmie
 
i know, i stood there looking into the pen at P@H, and there must have been at least 3 that looked potentially pregnant - i am admitedly speaking from very little experience, but all the same - the ONE female that was in there is bad enough for me! And the other petshop was unbelievable, it was quite disturbed by their carelessness, the guy just kept going on about how somebody had cleaned them out earlier that week (bare in mind 6 and 7 guineas in a hutch need cleaning regularly) and they had been put together during cleaning then mixed up after!
 
I just got a job at a large well known pet store here in the US. I was cleaning the piggies cages when I picked up one of the sows to take a look at her and discoverd that she was really a he! And he was in with a female! (however I believe he was to young to mate with her) I immediately informed my mananger who didn't really seem to care and told me to throw him in with the other boys. >:( It was very frustrating ! I immediately checked all the piggies we had in to make sure they were all appropriately sexed. Luckily he was the only one. There is also a smaller pet store here whom gets there piggies at about 3-4 weeks of age and keeps them all in one large cage. Most of the pigs don't get adopted out before they become of breeding age and I have seen boars try to mount younger females. I don't' understand why they just can't separate them! Plus what if someone buys a sow and she has baby's a week later!
 
We thought Cindy was pregnant when I got her but luckily she wasnt... we actually bought her male cage mate home before her but unfortunatly had to take him back... Its not fair for the pigs! Theyre too young! >:(
 
crittersgalore said:
! (however I believe he was to young to mate with her)

They can impregnate a sow from as early as 3 weeks old. I had to seperate some baby boys I had from a rescue pig because they were mounting their mum & sisters at 2 weeks old :o

I do know of someone who got 2 female pigs at 6 weeks old - they were pregnant & one died due to the size she got & the other died under General anestetic whilst having a C-section >:(
 
I too have a little boar from P@H and although I had a really positive experience from one member of staff at my local store I am inclined to agree that the majority of staff don't really care and neither do the people higher up. It would be wonderful if there could be more Pet shop regulation on selling animals where by the fines for mis sexing and subsequent litters are too great to ignore.

It's all very well if a store agrees to take back the litter but would you really want to do that in case the whole cycle starts again! Plus it doesn't help those people who lose their pets by being too young to have them which I imagine is very distressing.

Maybe Pet Shops such as Pets at Home should only be allowed to have one sex stores and if the breeder can't distinguish a male or female then maybe they shouldn't be breeding in the first place?
 
miss_piggy said:
Maybe Pet Shops such as Pets at Home should only be allowed to have one sex stores and if the breeder can't distinguish a male or female then maybe they shouldn't be breeding in the first place?

Here here! O0
 
It is awful! I bought my first piggy (when i was 12) from PAH. Luckilly, he was definitely a boy but, at the time we didn't know about this over the assistants selling wrong sexes to people. I think it is terrible! It surely cannot be hard to check thoroughly before selling these animals. I am extremely wary of buying from pet stores now though.
 
What I don't like is this stupid idea that they "cannot guarantee the sexes". It's nonsense. Put it this way - my friend's 12 year old and my own grandmother can both sex guinea pigs. It's not rocket science, they just don't want to take responsibility for what they sell.
 
Precisely. Its not like anyone has to be generally experienced to fathem out such things.
 
daftscotslass said:
What I don't like is this stupid idea that they "cannot guarantee the sexes". It's nonsense. Put it this way - my friend's 12 year old and my own grandmother can both sex guinea pigs. It's not rocket science, they just don't want to take responsibility for what they sell.

Totally agree :)
 
on deciding to have guinea pigs, i went along to p@h and bought 3 sows, it soon became very evident to me that one was a boar, even without sexing him, it was clear to me by his behavior that star (aka cheeky chappie) was not a female. so he was seperated straight away and he was neutered as soon as he was big enough for the op.The girls luckily were not pregnant.
He now lives with 2 sows.This taught me a valuable lesson never to buy from p@h.
how come they are allowed to mix their rabbits in with guinea pigs? i was not aware till recently that the animals are bred especially for p@h, i really thought they were from the public, which i'm sure some are also.

I lost one of my beautiful sows Daisy, at 6 months, she had an absess and after surgery,she didn't recover well and i had to hand feed her. and was never the same, she was on baytril for a while, but it didn't seem to work .we suspected she had a heart problem, she sadly died. She was sooooo pretty, and very affectionate towards me.

I re homed another sow from the Blue Cross, we called her maisy,because it sounds like daisy, she is also sooooo pretty, I will never buy from a pet shop again.
 
sorry to hear that :(

you thats one of my questions too. I know the rabbits are only young..but i still think its pretty dangerous to put them in with guinea pigs because it may appear easy for them to tremble on them.
When we went into pets at home last month we saw a white PEW, it looked very unhealthy, couldnt help but feel sorry for it.
These pet store assistants should be fired!
 
maisydaisystar said:
how come they are allowed to mix their rabbits in with guinea pigs?

Well, every pet shop is allowed to mix rabbits with guinea pigs, the Pet Care Trust (the overseeing body for the pet trade) specifically says it's ok. And considering that you aren't allowed to open a pet shop unless you have the Pet Care Trust qualification in pet shop management, basically every pet shop manager is taught that it is ok to keep them together...

However, P@H are actually in the process of refitting the runs so the rabbits and guinea pigs can be split - so at least they're listening to other people too.
 
hils78 said:
crittersgalore said:
! (however I believe he was to young to mate with her)

They can impregnate a sow from as early as 3 weeks old. I had to seperate some baby boys I had from a rescue pig because they were mounting their mum & sisters at 2 weeks old :o

I do know of someone who got 2 female pigs at 6 weeks old - they were pregnant & one died due to the size she got & the other died under General anestetic whilst having a C-section >:(

I was told that piggies weren't of breeding age until 8 weeks! I guess you learn somthing new everyday! I had never seen him mount her so hopefully, she's not pregnant :-\
 
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