i have to say that the 3 p@h stores we frequent, 2 in Lincoln and 1 in Scunthorpe,depending where we are at the time we remember to go for supplies,are all quite good with their animals in my opinion. the piggies are separated from the rabbits,and are also separated into sexes. in one of the stores,i cant remember which one,there are signs up saying that sexes of animals are not guaranteed,which makes sense,the employees are not experts,and even though some of us may find it very easy to sex a piggy for example,they may not. our small local pet shop is awful compared to p@h, their pigs are housed with their rabbits,in filthy cages that are rarely if ever cleaned out,the owner once said i dont bother with food bowls as they can eat it off the floor and its quicker to feed them all by throwing in a handful rather than picking up individual bowls,and why bother changing woodshavings everytime if you can just add a layer of dry over the old and it will last longer as theres still absorbancy in the old shavings underneath :tickedoff: needless to say that was the last tiem we went in there, they have birds in tiny cages, hamsters many to a tank,several with babies, they breed all of their female animals back to back just removing the babies when they need more to sell :'( at least at p@h the animals are clean, have plenty of good food,hay and fresh veggies and room to move. before we got our piggies we looked at rescuing from rspca and the amount it costs plus the rigmarole of arranging a home check as we live between areas put us well off,for the price of rehoming an older piggy while waiting weeks for the home check to just be arranged,we could have brought a perfectly healthy young piggy from the local petshop. it annoys me how they ask for such large donations,plus if its a pure breed animal it more to adopt :tickedoff: surely a dog is a dog, a cat is a cat, they try to make more money by asking for larger donations for the animals they know people will pay for,which is wrong. at one rspca shelter there were 3 piggies available, 2 normal short haired piggies and 1 satin,the satin was £2 more expensive ? not a lot i know,but extraq money just because its fur was different! i think my rant is over now,i personally wont buy pets from pet shops now as i rehome unwanted pets from freeads type sites rather than proper rescues,but if i did i would rather use a large store like p@h which is well known than a small back street shop which is left to do as it pleases as not enough people know about it (and yes i did report the small shop to the rspca,it has now been taken over and has new owners,fingers crossed it will change)
