Do your pigs gnaw wood?

[bats]

In another conversation thread about water bottles, I mentioned that none of my last 5 pigs gnawed wood -- although they had plenty of opportunity to do so.

Telephone wires and cardboard yes. But plyboard and branches, no.

What do other people´s pigs do?

[lisam]

When I had my organic apple tree pruned, I cut the branches and scrubbed them clean of moss and stuff. Some of my pigs (and my budgies) loved to chew on them, others ignored them.

I have a wooden house in each pair´s cage. Some are those log cabin types, and the pigs chew on the tops, which are some kind of green painted wood. I wish they would only chew on the log parts, but no. I´m sure it is probably some toxic paint. The other kinds are just unpainted pine, they don´t touch them.

My kids used to throw their used popsicle sticks in the pig´s cages, I wouldn´t know it until I would find a half eaten stick later. They must have liked the flavored part.

Mine love cardboard, and hard plastic when I am not looking. And book spines. What is it about those book spines? My rabbit is attracted to them also--must be the glue used.

[bats]

Oh yes, I forgot about book spines. I have half-eaten physics and calculus books, courtesy of Dog.

[Lynx]

Hard plastic. But only occasionally (they mostly chew on hay and food). Fortunately Kitten no longer knaws on me. She does love scrapping on the sides of the litter trays. It makes an absolutely horrifying noise. I´m sure that´s part of the fun.

[Jill]

Mine have chewed their wooden house so the window is now this misshapen roundish shape - no longer a circle. I´ve tried the apple tree branch but they weren´t interested. Toilet paper cardboard rolls will entertain them for a while.

Hey Bats, if they are going to chew a book I say physics and calc are the way to go. What erudite pigs!

[Laura823]

Mitzi has chewed a large extra door in her cardboard house (as if the 4 doors I had already cut weren´t enough!) and is now working on enlarging one of the original doors. Unfortunately with the addition of the 5th door the house no longer had enough sides to hold her weight on the roof, so she can´t stand on it anymore. It is really a sad sight. Her new Fiddlesticks tunnel should be in soon at the pet store though, so then I´ll give her that instead. The Fiddlesticks have bark on them, so maybe she´ll like that. She also chews on her Pigloo. Clothing seems to be a favourite, too.

Piglet´s favourite chewing material is metal. The cage bars especially, and the end of that ka-bob thingy we have in her cage. I keep telling her that wood and cardboard are better but she doesn´t care. She used to chew on her old log cabin (the kind with the green roof) but since we replaced it with a regular wood house (no bark) she won´t chew on it. She does like those Cholla cactus chews though. Mitzi won´t touch them.

[Dobby]

Buddy chews on my shirt sleeve when given half a chance, but the main thing he loves to chew on is the inside of his Pigloo. He gets inside it and chews on the ceiling (how he does this I´ll never understand), or he chews on the doorway´s edges.
When I first gave him wooden blocks, he chewed them for awhile, but tired of them quickly.
It seems he likes the reverberating racket made by chewing hard plastic first thing in the morning.

[Lynx]

Yes, the racket they can make must be very satisfying. The plastic mine chew on is just scored -- you can tell they aren´t really trying to eat it (there are no pieces missing). All we need are a chorus of chewing pigs.

[Becky]

Cage bars, wooden house, bark from hiddy tunnel, cardboard tunnel, metal vent that connects their cage to play area, anything and everything...that´s what my pigs chew adn gnaw.

[Sunny]

Fido loves his little cardboard house, but when his entry was enlarged as much as possible, he started working on the ceiling. Now he has only half a ceiling. The silly boy is literally eating himself out of a home.

I worried about him eating too much cardboard but I keep a pretty close eye on him and his poop still looks normal. And VERY regular. He´s a bit of a nervous pig and seems to need something to knaw on at all times. I keep him loaded up with hay and wood but he prefers cardboard.

[Laura823]

Fido sounds like Mitzi! I have a friend whose guinea pig ate her entire cardboard house - all that is left of it is a little piece of the roof, which she still crawls under to go to sleep and refuses to part with.

I had to take the "castle" Pigloo out of Mitzi´s cage and give her the regular, rounded roof kind because the racket of her chewing on the inside of the roof was driving me crazy! Piglet has two of the castle kind but she doesn´t really chew on them.

[Sunny]

Laura, that made me laugh out loud! That is where Fido is heading, a little piece of roof with just enough back and sides to keep it up. He still scampers under it when I approach his cage. Like that little thing will somehow protect him from the groping hands looking for piggie love.