Living Accommodations And Grooming

This is offered as a brief outline of what your pet pig needs to live happily in your home. There are several good books and manuals available to you that expand these recommendations. Please seek out advice from your breeder/sanctuary and other sources of information as you continue to live with your pig. To help your potbellied pig live a long and healthy life; the following are several considerations.

Don’t
• Assume your pet pig can survive without the proper inside and outside living conditions.
• Assume your pet pig can ward off dog attacks.
• Assume your pet pig can survive in extreme cold and hot.
• Assume your pet pig can survive in a car, even with the windows open, when the temperature is above 50 degrees.
• Assume your pet pig cannot be over shampooed.
• Assume your pet pig does not need to be groomed on regular basis.
• Assume your pet pig needs to be rubbed with oils to maintain less dry skin.
• Assume your pet pig does not need her ears cleaned, hooves trimmed, and tusk cut.

Do
• Provide your pet pig a sleeping area free from drafts with a bed or pillow or blankets in which to snuggle.
• Provide your pet pig a fenced area to protect her from dog attacks. Your pig, no matter what her age, has no defense against dog attacks.
• Provide your pet with:

Summer: shelter, shade, sunscreen, and fresh water to drink. Don’t forget water in which the pig can cool off (like using a child’s wading pool).
Winter: shelter and bedding, fresh water to drink, supplemental heat and bedding when the temperature is under 50 degrees.

• Provide your pet pig with a reasonable environment by not leaving her in a car when the outside temperature is above 50 degrees or the car is sitting in the full sun.
• Provide your pet pig with no more than a monthly shampoo. Too much shampooing or using dog, cat, or baby shampoo will cause your pig to have drier skin.
• Provide your pet pig with a moisturizer or humectants for her dry skin. If needed, you can treat internally by adding either fatty acids or a daily tablespoon of natural oil to her food, or supply a Vitamin-E capsule every day.
• Provide your pet pig with a monthly beauty check. Clean your pig’s ears and treat for ear mites, if necessary. Trim your pig’s hooves. Have the vet trim your pig’s tusk, if needed.

By caring for your pig’s environmental and grooming needs, you will assure yourself of giving your potbellied pig the necessary living conditions for a healthy life. With the monthly beauty checks, you provide yourself an opportunity to identify and to ward off a potential health problem for your pet.

Discipline And Behavior

These Brief suggestions are just the beginning of understanding your pet pig. NAPPA encourages you to continue to gather information about your potbellied pig by observation, asking questions, and seeking out experienced advise from qualified breeders sanctuaries, vets, and other pig parents. To help your pet pig live a long and healthy life; the following are several considerations.

Don’t
• Assume your pet pig can happily live alone and cloistered.
• Assume your pet pig does not have her own way of communicating.
• Assume your pet pig is passive and needs no stimulation.
• Assume your pet pig is not intelligent.
• Assume your pet pig does not need to be trained with rules to follow.

Do

• Provide your pet pig with companion animals and a broad life experience with other people and environments.
• Provide your pet pig with appropriate responses to what she is doing or saying. Learn how a pig thinks and how to “Talk Pig”.
• Provide your pet pig with adequate activities including time outside, toys, and a place to be just themselves.
• Provide your pet pig with the respect she deserves, being the fifth most intelligent creature on earth.
• Provide your pet with good parenting skills including unbending rules, loving, educational discipline, and realistic boundaries.

The training and discipline of your pet pig are your responsibility. This responsibility is not to be taken lightly. Your pig is never too young to begin her training. From the very beginning, she must understand the parameters of acceptable behavior, and be corrected if she doesn’t mind you. Pigs are hierarchial by nature, thus the owner must always be in charge. Your pig should be taught from the first moment she enters your home that ALL HUMANS, in all circumstances, are to be respected and never challenged. Never under estimate your pig and always establish yourself as “top pig”. Your potbellied pig, who is a living, intelligent and loving creature, is totally dependent on you to give her the home and training she deserves.