Mini pigs love to scratch! Since they don’t have hands to scratch with, they get creative. Oscar loves to scratch on furniture, walls, shoes, and even people. When he really gets into scratching, it almost looks like he’s dancing.
While pigs are often itchy, it’s important to pay attention to how frequently and how intensely your mini pig normally scratches so that you can monitor any changes. I held onto this video for a while before posting it because, in retrospect, I can see that Oscar was showing some signs of mange. He normally scratches on furniture and walls like in the video, but now that he is mange free, I know it’s not normal for him to scratch as much as he was. He also has some skin scabbing in the video which is another sign of mange. The symptoms are so obvious to me now that we’ve been through the mange and I have a better feel for his itchiness and skin color/texture baselines, but I just didn’t know what to look for then.
If your mini pig scratches like this, don’t panic. Even without mange, Oscar loves to scratch. However, if your mini pig is scratching obsessively and/or has skin scabbing, it might be worth a visit to the veterinarian for a skin scrape.