Well, life has been beyond hectic since I got back.
Firstly an update on the babies. It's not looking good for them. It doesn't matter what I do, they will not gain weight and simply sit at 85g. Considering they are a week old today, they should be at least up to 120g. At the same time they haven't shown any sign of fading so I haven't really decided what to do yet... For now while they seem happy and comfortable we'll keep chugging along but there is a probably a trip to the vet for euthanasia in their future. Ebony at least seems good, and so far no signs of the dreaded toxaemia. Once we get through another week I'll be certain she's free and clear and stop stressing.
Now on more selfish subjects the issues with this litter has thrown a rather severe kink in my plans for showing. I of course do a lot of traveling to shows and considering the rough start the two babies have had to life, even if they pull through I wouldn't be comfortable taking them on my long trips. Most likely if they pull through I'll find them a very nice pet home. But a breeder friend of mine has been WONDERFUL and offered me one or two babies to show once Eddie is retired. I can either keep them or return them to her at the end of their show career. So they won't be Samsara babies, but at least I will still have something to show along with Laertes. For showing though I do prefer to show longs. I love Laertes dearly but he's pretty much the same at every show, it's the reason why markeds have such long show careers. Whereas longhairs are always different, they always look different and are can change so rapidly.
I have also been shopping, which is always excellent fun. Basically I'm not happy withe the bedding I use. It costs me $40 a week for just enough bedding to clean out seven pigs, which is ridiculous. Anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows I'm a fleece fanatic. It's looks so nice, is so easy to clean and is a one off cost, what could be better? However people have also directed me towards vetbed so I decided it's time to run a comparison.
The pigs for this experiment are my messiest pigs. Sterling who lives by himself and the Sheba boys, who are the grottiest pigs I've ever known. Sterling will have the usual fleece pad, which I'll make myself. It'll have a fleece upper, an incontinence pad sandwiched in the middle and a cotton backing. The sheba boys will have purple vetbed over the top of an incontinence pad.
I've ordered a new brand of incontinence pads since my old one is no longer available. These ones are meant to be of a commercial quality with a 3300mL absorbency per square metre compared to the 2500mL per metre squared I was using. Unfortunately they are on backorder so they may not be here for another couple of weeks yet. But the vetbed has already arrived and so far I'm impressed. So since todays clean out day and I totally don't want to buy more bedding after shelling $60 out on vetbed, I'm going to try the more traditional approach with the vetbed and place it over a thick wad of newspaper and see how we go. I bought enough for three changes because the sheba boys are so messy so we'll see how we go.
My other purchase was three medium dog crates to convert to a tower of boar cages. Each dog crate gives just over four square feet of space, perfect for my show boars. Plus the height on the crates means I can put a level across effectively making two cages. So once set up I'll have six boar cages. I have access to incredibly cheap corflute in black or white so I'm thinking I'll use black corflute to make nice deep trays for each level. Then once my 'experiment' is over and I decide whether I want vetbed or fleece bedding I'll outfit the whole tower. I have to do the bedding in stages though as it's so expensive. The incontinence pads are $20 for 1m x 1m and the vetbed is $35 for 1m x 1.55m. However I'm going to enquire into purchasing a whole roll to see if that might save some money.
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