[Gpdd] CARE: Uneven distribution!

[Stefanie Duffy]

I would like your thoughts on the behaviour of my crazy piggies please!

Now that it's almost summer here (supposedly) the Squeakers are living outside. In their pen, as well as lots of empty space for running around in, there are ten little houses and two enormous hutches. At night, even though the pen is perfectly secure, I always make sure that no piggies are still wandering around the pen and then I lock the hutch doors until breakfast veggie time. During the day they all trot in and out of both hutches but when it comes to night time, fourteen choose one hutch and only three choose the other. This means that on cleaning out day, one hutch hardly needs doing, and the other has a compressed layer of smelly poo! Tonight, there was such a huge huddle round the bowl of Readigrass in the crowded hutch that some of the piggies weren't able to jostle their way to the front. In desperation I lifted two of them out and put them in the other hutch. Am I being cruel when they have "chosen" the other hutch? Or (no offence Squeakers) have they actually got the brain power to "choose"? Perhaps they are just following each other. I would be grateful for your comments. What would you do?

Stefanie and the Surrey Squeakers