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SASSY DRINKERS
This thought crossed my mind the other day. I was just musing over the fact that (and I'm sure this is only something piggy slaves like us would understand, and share...) when we love our pigs so much we're obsessed with every little detail. From the pink foot pads to the crests at the top of their heads, and piggy tongues are always a favourite, lips too. The va-va-voom texel hair (*cough*, Alden's Snowflake....), the rex chub (my Snoopy...and Karine's entire gang), etc. etc. ETC.
Then there's the drinking.
Come on, there's got to be more of you out there who can tell who's drinking just by listening to the rhythmn of their tongue pushing on the spout, right?
I'll start this off 
Meet Snoopy. Just like her feisty teethies you see there, she drinks like a machine gun. I mean, it's literally GUNNA GUNNA GUNNA I hear. I understand that she always wolfs down her lettuce so she gets to eat more pieces of lettuce per unit time than others, and therefore more veggies in total....but really, there's only one spout! No one's rushing you woman!!
Here's another one of her. You can actually see the water droplets....her chin is usually wet after a drink. Sloppy girl 
This is Puffy, my first ever piggy and holds a very special spot in me. I've lost him for 3+ years now, so I don't quite remember how he drinks, but I still adore this photo of him, from his four digits perched on the rock, to his lush peruvian hair cascading down, and the beady eyes!!
Minipuff! His daughter! She inherited her father's gentle demeanor and is the sweetest....she basically drinks like a stuffed toy. Or a debutante. Delicately, then taking a long time to swallow and even chew on the water (it seems) in between takes.
When I'm at the computer and I hear someone drinking really slowly, sometimes with a pause so long in between I thought they finished drinking already...it's always her.
That's Flubby! The baby of our herd. Poor little girl (this was 4 months back) was so small she literally had to paddle her way up the coroplast just to be tall enough for the water ! 
This is our very old lady Snowy (she's 8!). This was an old photo of her about 3 years ago and she has some hair loss due to an ovarian cyst which we removed, otherwise she's fluffy as a lamb. Snowy is a BIG drinker. She's a huge fan of H2O, when it's pellet time everyone is busy gobbling up their rations but Snowy would go back and forth between the food bowl and the water bottle for a quick drink. She takes a long time to swallow in between, but still a forceful drinker.
So she sounds like a malfunctioning machine gun:
Gun gun gun......................................gun gun gun.........................
Then there's Cotton! Cotton was a soft, fluffy beautiful boy. (RIP) This was him as a baby, his first time figuring out the water spout!
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Things got interesting when he got older and lived with his litter brother, Fuzz. The two of them were polar opposites. Cotton was always courteous and often get pushed out of the way when his brother (bigger and more burly) was thirsty. Cotton would then make a lap around the perimeter of the cage and come back with a face that said "are you done? can I drink now?" aw.... 
I distinctly remember revising with my brother back then, and we'd hear
GUN GUN GUN GUN GUN GUNGUNGUNGUNGUN - in quick successions, that was Fuzz
Compared to a really soft, slow GUN........GUN GUN..............
....
.......
gun..
his drinking rhythmn was so random that I actually (out of boredom) started recording his pattern trying to see if there was a logical sequence behind it.... 2,3,1,1.....1.....4! It was more irrational than pi .
Buggy! He obviously thinks the water bottle is a chew toy. We have bite marks on the spout. He's also very elusive and most of the photos I have of him are of him drinking - that's usually when he actually comes out of hiding. He's very beautiful.
PJ (Buggy's roomate) - RIP. PJ was a real goof when it comes to drinking. For some reason his head had to be perpendicular to the spout! Just as well, because he has the fluffiest chinny for us to marvel at! Who else have pigs who drink with their heads turned like that?
Share with us your piggy drinking anecdotes, I'll add them below 
Comments from friends:
Delaine:
| I don't have any pictures of my girls drinking yet but I really enjoyed seeing yours. Your pigs are all so cute. I especially liked the first picture. My girls are in my kitchen but I am not sure if they have different drinking styles. I am going to watch and listen when they drink, Zoe and Abbey have four water bottles in their cage and two of them are beside their pellet dishes. Like Snowy both my girls eat some pellets, take a drink, eat more pellets, etc. etc. |
Texcavy:
MrTex and I make a game of it.
Guess who is drinking.
We are both correct about 98% of the time. Once in a while someone fools us by changing it up little.
mmeadow:
Peaches has always been a heavy drinker, and really hits that bottle hard (clankety, clankety, clankety). She's a skinny (young in this picture, now 6 3/4) and has a ravenous appetite along with that bottomless thirst. Lots of poop and pee to deal with!
Waddles:
I can definitely tell without looking which of my pigs is at the water bottle.
I had a previous pair who would patiently line up behind each other to drink from the same water bottle even though there were 2 water bottles side by side.
pigjes:
I can tell too. Kooky used to hate loud drinkers when she wanted to take a nap, so she taught them to be more quite applying a butt nip, lol!
Current drinkers: Plucky is a gobbler of a large amount in one go. Yiyi takes sips. Yuyu makes smacking sounds after a drink, heheheh.
Jaycey:
| Hearing them drink makes me so happy. Especially when I hear Anselmo drinking as he has sludge/stone problems and so should drink a lot. But before his operation last week he didn't at all. He slurps his water. Sticks the whole spout in his mouth and then swipes his head to the side. Arnold J. Rimmer was the funniest. He used to use his teeth on the spout. It was the loudest noise EVER, ding ding ding ding ding. You could hear him anywhere in the house, and even outside if you had the window open. He used to live in my bedroom and he would wake my sister up when he had a drink. Jon Snow is funny when he has some "juice" from a syringe. I mix up fresh orange juice with water to give to Anselmo to up his water intake. Jon loves it, I think he thinks it's piggy drugs!. His little piggy eyes get so big when he has some. You can hear him gulping and slurping as he bites on the syringe. He's a crazy piglet. |
clairey:
| I can tell who is at the water bottle too. Stephen tends towards the machine gun style and Robert makes squelchy, slurpy noises. |
C.Cole-chakotay:
My girls are very quiet drinkers. I don't hear them. I watch them sometimes. They will take a sip of water, turn around and eat a bite or two, and repeat.
PooksiedAnimals:
Eclair used to have this really weird way of drinking water - she'd try to tip her head upside-down. So very strange.
I caught this photo of Bertie, as she was chewing her water: 
skinnypigs1:
I know Barnaby is drinking not because of the clinking of the ball but because he swishes the water around in his mouth after each drink.
Hobbes drinks very fast, really quick taps.
Calvin is SO loud drinking. He likes to push the water bottle up and let it smack down between each drink. You can literally hear him while watching TV downstairs.
Grover (RIP) He was the biggest drinker, you knew it was him because of long you could hear someone drinking.
Ernie takes long drags of water at a time. He really puts a large portion of the spout in his mouth and stays there and then lets go to swallow.
PiggieMom56:
| I need to see if I can sneak a picture of them drinking, because all of these pictures are so cute. Gem likes to "eat" her water, my mom thinks its hilarious and comments that the water isn't "chunky." Every time she drinks she always makes this cute noise like someone clicking their tongue. Squeaky is a lot quieter so I cannot always tell how she sounds, but I think its pretty similar. They both always drink after they've either had hay or pellets. Its so cute when I see their little butts sitting in front of the water bottle. |
JessicaC:
I love listening to my piggies drink!
Fluffy drinks very quickly with water falling off his chubby neck and makes these funny sounds- like lip smacking.
Craig, Niko, Kobe and Teddy are slobs to and try to take the water bottle with them. Clank clank bang bang.
Sassy and Maggie are dainty drinkers. They take their time. Sometimes bicker over it too, even though they have 2.
AldenM1:
Charlie Chocobutt did a dance: drink, pellets, drink, pellets.
Ouiser always drank in twos: drink-drink, drink-drink, drink-drink.
Albert is the machine-gun drinker.
Snickers acts like it's the first time he's seen a water bottle and drinks upside down, sideways, pulling the bottle and banging it back, whatever's noisiest and least tidy.
When you posted this on Facebook I realized I don't know how Cookie drinks, so I watched carefully just now, and: she's absolutely silent. If she weren't plump and shiny and healthy I'd wonder if she were even getting water out of the bottle. It's amazing how quiet she is.
iastate09:
Ace is the bottle-slammer. Rudy is like Cookie, apparently. If he didn't produce pretty poos I would worry. I never hear him, but have caught him once.
Ace's favorite time to drink is from 3-6 am. It's a lovely alarm clock. (They are in my room)
goosey1019:
Neal, who just passed a week ago, always used to crack us up, because he would shove about half of the spout into his mouth and then rattle the ball like crazy. It really amused my dad when he came to visit us.
Mozzie doesn't put the spout in his mouth at all, he knocks his teeth against the ball. Then the water spills into his mouth and all over his chin.
Jack is the only pig I have who drinks water in a way I'd consider "normal." He just puts the end of the spout in his mouth and clicks the ball.