Rehoming Ideas

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nutmeg

nutmeg

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Things just seem to have gone really crazy at the moment with the number of guinea pigs coming in, it seems all rescues and their fosterers are full with more coming in daily. I really don't remember it being this bad last year. There have been threads about 'why' this my be the case, but I just wondered what others did to find new homes for their rescues, as their are definitely more coming in than going out. There is the forum here of course, I also have posters up in all my local vets, and sometimes use guineapig rehome. I know as rescues we (Becklen/Sokel) can be found by googling. Do any other rescuers have any other ideas that may be helpful in rehoming?
xx
 
I know Sokel, hels I don't know who rehomes to Glasgow I get confused sorry rolleyes. I know someone does :).

Anyways if I was looking for a piggy, and didn't know this website the first thing I would do is google guinea pigs glasgow, your rescues don't come up, is there someway to make it come up?
 
JoanneG111 said:
I know Sokel, hels I don't know who rehomes to Glasgow I get confused sorry rolleyes. I know someone does :).

Anyways if I was looking for a piggy, and didn't know this website the first thing I would do is google guinea pigs glasgow, your rescues don't come up, is there someway to make it come up?
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What? ha ha. If you google guinea pig rescues north west, cumbria, scotland etc etc or wherever, then you will find local rescues. You wouldn't need to know actual names of rescues. xx:)
 
Last year I managed to get publicity in local paper twice when I was really struggling to rehome. Once in May, which was very unsuccessful, just had two people call asking me to take there guineas. But I did the same again in October and was inundated with good homes coming forward and received a lot of donations of food and hay for the piggies in rescue.

So depending on who reads the paper that week it can be successful sometimes and help raise awareness. I've also had people call months later who saw the article and now wish to rehome.

I have tried again recently to get another article but haven't been able to so will try again in a couple of months.
 
nutmeg said:
Things just seem to have gone really crazy at the moment with the number of guinea pigs coming in, it seems all rescues and their fosterers are full with more coming in daily. I really don't remember it being this bad last year. There have been threads about 'why' this my be the case, but I just wondered what others did to find new homes for their rescues, as their are definitely more coming in than going out. There is the forum here of course, I also have posters up in all my local vets, and sometimes use guineapig rehome. I know as rescues we (Becklen/Sokel) can be found by googling. Do any other rescuers have any other ideas that may be helpful in rehoming?
xx
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I'm not a rescue, but I do know that the horse and dog rehoming charities I support are very active on twitter and regularly post links to animals that need rehoming, as well as using it as a channel for fundraising.

I don't know how effective it is though. I can only assume it works as they all seem to put a fair bit of effort into continuing that line of pr. If it didn't help, presumably they wouldn't bother.
 
I did a paid ad on adtrader last week (mainly to help push down a guy on there that we know is not a good sort :x) and all I got was one call from someone wanting to get rid of piggies... not adopt any! :{

We advertise on Pre-loved and update it weekly.

We advertise on various pet rehoming groups (East Anglia Pets for Life, Norfolk Re-homing) that have quite a few members.

We advertise all our guineas on Guinea Pig Rehome and update weekly.

I update the available guineas page on our website at least weekly, and of course put them on this forum.

Most people seem to come to us via the website or Guinea Pig Rehome. I have also put up ads locally in pet shops, vets etc. but it's time consuming to keep going round and checking they're up or replacing them.

Sophie
x
 
my local paper does a feature on my rescue guineas needing homes every 3wks the first time it went into the paper i rehomed 11 in 5 days they come and do pictures of the guineas needing homes can only choose 3 guineas or 2 pairs but all that ring up do have a look at the other guineas and ive rehomed around 30 guineas since october and 30 via my website
 
What a great idea, clairelove! I bet people love looking at the pics of the piggies in the paper! My parents love looking at 'pet of the week' in their local paper!
 
maybe you could arrange something over the summer with the community like raising awareness of the proper care of guinea pigs and then people can see the pigs and possibly fall in love with them, maybe thats too expensive i dunno, i havent much experience with things like this... Also i know that our college took in a lot of guinea pigs from the RSPCA. Do you have any animal colleges in your area, they usually have space for more rodents and the students look after the animals on a day to day basis, cleaning them out, feeding them etc.
 
Do you have pet shops in your area that don't sell pets. I can think of 3 locally that don't and I pretty sure one puts up posters for a local dog rescue. Perhaps you could partner up with the shopowners. They might advertise your rescue/ website?
 
I had a local radio reporter come to interview me last summer and that seemed to generate a huge amount of interest - lots of really lovely offers of homes and people donating a few bits and pieces.

Teresa x
 
Recently I have just put an add on face book which will pop up at anyone living with 50 miles of Norwich which coveres most of Teresa Sophie's and my area just links to the site and is targetted at people who are interested in guinea pigs over 18. Will let you know how productive that one is.
 
There's some very good ideas here.

I've just put an appeal on eRodent's front page and the most popular guinea pig pages. I've pointed people to the rescue forum here and guinea pig rehome.

Despite being sorely neglected by me many of the pages 500+ visitors a day who are specifically looking for guinea pig information. Interestingly the "before you buy a guinea pig" page got 800 people last week - although I believe that already had a link to guinea pig rehome in it.

Paula
 
Hi everybody,

This is going to be a long post but hope it will be of use !
As you know, we have just become the very proud owners of 6 lovely little piggies. I have wanted piggies for about 6 months and thought about many options prior to finding you lovely people. I had been to the local pet shops and looked and looked but nothing made feel I was doing the right thing by purchasing from a pet shop, I also didn’t really care for the way the people sold the animals. I also spoke to quite a few RSPCA centres local and some of quite a distance. Unfortunately the RSPCA centres I called had no piggies to re-home at that time and I received a polite no with no offer of information regarding to any independent rescues. I contacted may local vets who also advised they didn’t know of any piggies needing homes at that time. I had no idea independent rescues existed. The only way I found this forum was by typing into Google “I want a guinea pig†and from here found yourselves. So from pet shop, to RSPCA to VETS perhaps we are missing a vital link? Perhaps we have a talented person on the Forum who could make a flyer advertising Piggy Rehoming and then the people on the Forum could take them to local vets not just the ones they use but others in their area. Perhaps we could also talk to our local RSPCA who could point people in the right direction if they did not have any piggies for re-homing. And last but not least, many local newsagents have notice boards where for a small fee (20p per week in ours) you can advertise whatever you like. I would happily pay for a few notices to be displayed in my local newsagents.

I thank my lucky stars I have found the Forum, you are friendly helpful and if I dare say quite opinionated (which I like) After all, it’s down to you, I have found another 6 love’s of my life x)x)x)
 
The poster I have in vets is A5 size, so I know it will fit on most boards, it has a photo of a couple of my guinea pigs, and wording underneath, then laminated. Funnily enough I have had two enquiries this afternoon, one via a notice in a vets and an e mail, not sure where she found me, but have asked. Hopefully these may lead to some nice new homes. Thanks everyone for ideas. xx
 
nutmeg said:
The poster I have in vets is A5 size, so I know it will fit on most boards, it has a photo of a couple of my guinea pigs, and wording underneath, then laminated. Funnily enough I have had two enquiries this afternoon, one via a notice in a vets and an e mail, not sure where she found me, but have asked. Hopefully these may lead to some nice new homes. Thanks everyone for ideas. xx
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If you coud e-mail me your poster i will copy it and laminate it at work and put the around and about for you. Let me know:)
 
Thank you very much, that would be great, thanks. I am off work next week so will sort something out for you. x
 
Jane you need to get your poster up at the feed store - I looked at the notices the other day & couldn't see one from you. Also, if you send me a copy, I'll ask my vets (both in Wigan & Widnes) to put it up for you xx
 
I did have one up in Leigh's but they must have had a sort out and moved it. Will give them another on my next hay run. Thanks. x
 
paulag said:
I've just put an appeal on eRodent's front page and the most popular guinea pig pages. I've pointed people to the rescue forum here and guinea pig rehome.

Paula
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The eRodents website is a brilliant site, I used the care information on there extensively when I first got my guinea pigs, and gerbils, and degus. Excellent site!

At the risk of getting shot down, I wanted to recount some of the issues I encountered when looking for guinea pigs to rescue which may be of help to this discussion.

I spent a LOT of time trying to find local rescues. I searched for hours online, tried numerous keywords in google and still failed to bring up any local results. I had to really spend a lot of time searching to get any results. The guineapigrehome website was the key. It comes up high on the google results page, higher than a local rescues website could hope to get. Eventually I came from that site to this forum and the thing that surprised me was the number of guinea pigs listed on the forum that weren't listed on the guineapigrehome site. I'm not sure why this is, but I think you may be missing some genuine rehoming offers from people that search guineapigrehome, find no suitable guinea pigs and give up without finding their way to the forum listings.

Just a thought
 
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