What kind of pigs make good house pets

Pigs need to be busy or they can cause a lot of damage. If you are planning on having an indoor pig, you will need to do more pig-proofing that a toddler would require. Pigs can open the refrigerator, they can open drawers and get into mischief. They can get into clothes, food, and tear into food packages. There is endless trouble they can cause if they are bored. Pigs have a very strong pecking order. They are very dominant.

Withing a team of pigs, they will shuffle for the position as the dominant pig. In a situation where pigs are heavily involved with people, they will often exert aggressive behavior against people. This tends to happen a lot more when pigs are indoor animals. They see the house as their territory and can be very aggressive to visitors or other unfamiliar people. The best way to curb this response in pigs is to train them firmly from the time that they are piglets.

Spoiled piglets will grow up to be aggressive pigs. Piglets need daily, consistent training to respect all humans as being above them in the hierarchy. This can be difficult to train if you have children in the home because of their smaller size.

Pigs are superb rooters. They love to dig in the dirt and are fabulous at digging out the roots of plants to eat. Their rooting instinct can be curbed, but never completely disappears. There are reasons why pigs should be allowed to root: the action can help benefit their health and well-being in different ways:. If you plan on taking your pig outside to use the bathroom, use these opportunities to allow them to root outdoors in their natural habitat for a little while.

If you have a decent-sized backyard, you can also set up a pen outdoors as well. The extra exercise outside can benefit them! Pigs eat both herbivores and carnivores. They will eat meat and vegetation. This can be a good thing because a pig will eat nearly any table scraps. But, on occasion, it can also mean that pigs become aggressive to their human owners. There are multiple instances, though rare, of pigs attacking and biting or attempting to eat a person.

The cost of owning any pet can be high, depending on the individual animal. But, consider some of the needs of your pig and how you plan to meet those needs. Will you be paying a vet to care for your pig, or do you have the resources and knowledge to do it yourself? Consider some of the following needs, which will be covered later in the article in more depth.

These are all costs to consider before you get a pig. One thing new piglet owners should be warned of is their noise. Piglets will squeal very loudly for their food, especially when hungry. Do not discipline your piglet if it is disruptive; this is just its natural instinct. To prevent it from happening in the first place, provide food at optimal times of the day, ideally in the morning and evening.

Pigs can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The following are some of the most common pig breeds that are adopted as pets. The Pot-bellied pig can be one of 15 breeds that hail from Southeast Asia. Specific breeds of pot-bellied pigs include the Vietnamese pot-bellied, Chinese, or Asian pot-bellied pig. Because there are so many breeds that make up this pig, they can have quite a range in size. They range in size, usually standing between 16 to 30 inches tall.

They usually weigh an average of 90 to pounds. They also grow relatively quickly, reaching their max size around three to five years of age. Healthy pot-bellied pigs can live for years. Teacup pigs are a marketing ploy by pig owners seeking to sell their pigs for a higher price. They can still grow to as much as lbs, although most will be about lbs at full size. That is smaller than many farm pig breeds, which can grow to over 1, lbs.

Since getting our little guy…. I see a lot of pot bellied pigs on here and I think people do not comprehend how much money it costs to care for these animals.

We brought him home…. Well we had bought him a dog kennel for him to live in…in the house. Then we started to let him out in the yard to go potty and low and behold……he started to dig up our yard!!!!!!

There that fixed that problem. We bought him a nice big dog house to be in and a pool and even gave him a little patio of concrete to keep his hooves trimmed down. I had no idea they were so….. Hmmmm wrong again….

Well it had to be done. Then about that time all my dogs started to get sick and I took one of them to the vet to find out that all my dogs somehow got worms!!!!!!!!!!!

Guess how that happened? Needless to say I was told that my little guy had been wormed. Hmmmm not true I guess. I read that taking your pot bellied pig for walks and letting him walk on concrete etc. Hmmm not so again! I tried to get him to let me work with his feet and that of course was not happening. Take a look at the following pages for some important considerations for anyone considering or already keeping pet pigs. Share this The law. Pigs as pets. Size of pigs Whilst piglets may look cute, even miniature breeds e.

Life span The average life span of these breeds is five to ten years, although some can live up to 25 years. Temperament Whilst some pigs have a very good temperament others should be handled with care.