January 2020 so far..

It's the 15th of January, half way through the first month of the new decade and we have already taken in 21 guinea pigs, with many more on the waiting list. That's 1.5 pigs per day, every single day. I know January is a bad month for rescues all over, but I honestly wasn't expecting this many.

Our quarantine / intake block is a finite size, purposely. There are only so many guinea pigs we can care for to the standards that we set ourselves, and our back kitchen currently houses 20 pigs at maximum. Many of these spaces are currently taken up by single boars waiting for a friend / neuter, or elderly piggies who are happy but unlikely to go to new homes. Thank goodness for our foster network, there are currently another 19 piggies in foster! There are plenty more permanent residents outside in the pig shed but we do not mix these with the incoming pigs due to disease risk.

So our stats look like this:

Pigs in intake block: 23 (oops)
Pigs in foster: 19
Pigs on waiting list to come in: 14
Pigs reserved: 0
Pigs in pig shed: 50ish

To continue to take in piggies that need us, we obviously need some of these spaces to be freed up, but it's not that easy. Come the weekend we will have 7 single boars in rescue waiting to find friends, none of which is particularly straightforward. Even if we neuter them (£55 a time) they then have 6 weeks post-op before they can be mixed with sows. So that's 7 spaces filled.

Oldies are currently taking 4 blocks, bless them. An influx of 5 year old piggies over the Christmas period means that although we have successfully found a number of bereaved piggies a friend or two, they are unlilkely to be offered homes. A resident OAP herd is the answer for the girls but current space makes this impossible right now, although it's pencilled in for the future.

So all of this means that now, right at this moment, we do not have any space. In an emergency we will always do our best but it's simply a matter of maths.

I have several adoption applications to work through but currently very few pigs that are ready to go, so at the moment it is like gridlock.

In the meantime at least I know that the pigs here and in foster are getting the best possible care. I just wish it were easier to help more.