Guinea Pigs

In My Humble Opinion
41

Cool!

You’ll definitely want to replace the cage flooring sooner rather than later, as they could chew right through that plastic drop cloth.

If you find they chew the coroplast edges, you can get plastic report covers (the sort with a folded sheet of clear plastic to protect the contents, and an opaque plastic “spine” that you slide over the clear bit once you’ve put the papers inside). We’ve got the edges of our current cage’s coroplast done up with those edge pieces. The piggies had chewed one corner of the coroplast (the corner nearest the rest of the house) down to the floor of the cage, requiring us to redo the coroplast bit.

They will, quite possibly, be afraid of you for some time. Of our first 3, one (Sherma) would come running for petting, the second one (Cinnamon) would tolerate it and purr, but wouldn’t approach me for it, and the third (Panda) would actively run away from my hand pretty much the entire time we had him. Sherma and Panda are now gone and have been replaced by Pig 4 (Ulysses) and Pig 5 (Vera). Of those: Cinnamon still tolerates petting and will purr. Ulysses runs like hell when I try to pet him, and if I want to pick him up, I have to corner him in the pigloo and grab him from in there. Vera sometimes bolts, sometimes tolerates petting.

All 3 of them, however, will settle down nicely once I do succeed in picking them up. The only one who never settled was Panda. There were several times when I was holding him where some sudden noise would startle him and he’d try to leap out of my lap / arms. Leading to one poor fellow who came to the door, being greeted by me opening the door, a black and white blur flying through the air and onto the floor, me shrieking in alarm and bolting away from the door in hot pursuit of the terrified guinea pig. I finally caught him and had to rush him to the vet… then tell the kids that I broke their guinea pig (the pig made a full recovery - fluid in his lungs and broke both teeth, but with appropriate meds he recovered and lived another 4 years). That tradesman never forgot that visit, I’m sure!

Oh - did anyone mention that they purr? Not all of mine (Vera has never purred, and Ulysses will only purr rarely, when I’m holding him and stroking him and he accidentally lets his guard down), but the others will, when stroked from behind the head along their body down toward their rump, make a sort of shuddery OOOO-oooo-oooooo-ooooooo sound. This’ll start happening once the pigs are more used to you and relaxed around you.

The shrieking for food is fun too. We’ve decided that they’ve got us trained to give 'em yummies whenever they wheek.

42

Mine used to LOVE it, now they turn up their noses.

Wanna get a piggy excited, 100% reliable?

_ O _ A I N E (fill in the blanks. Judging by their reaction you’d think the blanks should be filled with ‘C’ but it’s actually a variety of lettuce).

Green peppers will make them your slaves for life. A whole ear of corn - including the husk - is a nice treat though not something they should have every day. If I give mine a bit of watermelon, they’ll eat the outer part of the rind, and maybe some of the red part. If I give them a strawberry, they’ll eat the leafy top and ignore the fruit. A grape makes them ga-ga.

Try offering the really high-interest foods only directly from your hand, as opposed to putting them into the cage and letting the pigs come put and eat when you’ve stepped back. This will help teach them that you are the Bringer Of All Good Things :slight_smile:

43

A high quality feed should have sufficient C in it (we give them Oxbow Cavy Cuisine) but you never know how fresh the food is. We’ve had several different vets (in the same exotics practice) recommend giving the C via a dropper, assuring me the pigs would learn to love it (it’s a sweet liquid) and come running. Nope, never worked out that way. Right now we give them chewable tablets from Oxbow (but Oxbow reformulated the tablets and now only 2 of the 3 like them, sigh…). I think they do help, as our senior piggy is over 6 years old now and going strong.

44

Since hamsters seem to be getting a bad rap around here, I have to come defend them, albeit with one data point. We had a hamster for almost two years, and we still miss him now almost a year later. We replaced him with two gerbils just to try something different, and we’re really disappointed.

The hamster wasn’t very smart, but that was part of the charm. His world consisted of Thor (yes, we gave him a big name for a little guy) and Not Thor. Not Thor might be edible so he did try to nibble everything that he came into contact with, including fingers, but he never bit us hard, just nibbled on fingernails. He had no fear of the Not Thor world when we’d let him out to run around, and he would blindly stumble in to the bemused cat, who would then turn and run a few steps away from the tiny little hamster.

Hamsters are omnivores, which is kind of cool. We would occasionally give Thor little pieces of cheese or meat, and he loved it. They can also hunt, and we’d bring him a grasshopper once in a while during the summer. That was hysterical. He’d go into this crazy hyperdrive (which considering he otherwise never moved fast, was awesome) where you really couldn’t see what he was doing because it was all a blur. All of a sudden, a leg and then maybe the head would go flying off and next thing we’d know, he’d be sitting there calmly eating the body. OK, that sounds macabre, but we’re weird like that and found it funny.

I think we’re going to have to get another hamster after the gerbil girls are gone.

45

One food not mentioned (although I may have missed it) is dandelion greens. They usually love the stuff, and it’s loaded with vitamins including C.

46

Be sure they get plenty of Vitamin C. Maybe it’s changed since we had ours, but at the the time, the standard ol’ piggie food wasn’t supplemented.

47

Chicory was a favorite of mine - I think we bought it specifically because we’d heard guinea pigs liked it.

It’s how he learned that that sound of the fridge opening might mean treats. Open fridge, bring chicory, happy piggy!

Eventually, we were all bringing him a little something every time we opened the fridge, he’d get so excited. And you hate to disappoint them!

48

Ours eat most leaves - parsley, mint, celery, rocket (arugula), pea sprouts, broccoli leaves, any kind of lettuce (but iceberg is bad for them). They also like mushroom stalks and the ends off green beans. They like spinach but I don’t give it to them often - too high in oxalates. I would think dandelion greens would be the same. They eat straw, hay and newspaper as well, but I’m not sure that is actually nutritional.

We accidentally left ours for a week once. Accidentally, as in we had organised for the neighbour to look after them, but her father died, and she forgot. They were still alive when we got home, very thirsty, but otherwise OK.

49

Don’t add vitamin C to their water! Vitamin C degrades quickly in sunlight and it doesn’t last very long out of it, either. Feeding them fresh vegetables daily will be enough, messing with their water could have the unfortunate consequence of making them reject normal water because they’re not used to the taste.

Isn’t that a sign of displeasure?

50

I just noticed that you had posted in the Gettysdope thread, as being in northern VA. If I’d realized that earlier, I’d have steered you to the local rescue group (www.mgpr.org). They not only have piggies available (though you have to wait until their monthly “adoption meets”) but they’re glad to give piggy-care advice also.

And a source of Coroplast is Banana Banner on Duke Street (near Telegraph Road). There are doubtless other places, also.

We buy our piggy supplies (Care Fresh and Cavy Cuisine) at Booth Feeds.
boothfeeds.com lists their locations. Their price for Care Fresh is a bit cheaper than PetSmart, last time I compared and they’ll carry everything out to your car for you. We’re closest to the Lorton location (in fact, that’s the closest source of Oxbow products in general; there are a few independent pet stores that also carry them). They carry the huge boxes (must be 4+ cubic feet) of the Western Timothy hay, which is probably more than you have room to store but would last forever; they carry smaller boxes also.

They also recommend several exotics vets - Stahl in Vienna (http://www.seavs.com/) is the one we’ve used including the time our Panda tried to disprove “pigs can’t fly”. There’s another exotics specialist near Fair Oaks, though I haven’t been there. Be warned, exotics vets seem to be pricey (maybe pricier than a dog/cat vet because of the niche market).

51

I used Lifemate All Natural Hemp Bedding, which was GREAT! It keeps the smell down quite a bit. Plus Timothy Hay smells good, and we did keep the cage clean regularly.

I had a single guinea pig, which I learned was at least five times as much work as a pair of guinea pigs, because poor Gordo would get lonely. You do not want a lonely pig.

Get the biggest cage you can.

Read up on guinea pig care.

Don’t forget Vitamin C drops.

Enjoy your new pig(gies). They really are great pets. I loved my Gordo.

52

I contacted them before I bought mine (I live in Tysons). They are a very big-hearted group doing wonderful things but IMHO overdo it about qualifying you to adopt a guinea pig.

53

Thanks for the references. I’ll look those up next time I need to.

So we’ve named them Pogo and Lucy. Pogo’s the boss. She steals whatever Lucy has- straw, house, water, whatever. She keeps making Lucy sleep outside of their hut so we made a special home for Lucy out of a shoebox. Now we’re having fun watching Lucy fend off Pogo from her new home.

For some reason, when I try to grab them out of their cage, they run like hell. But once they’re out, they’re as docile as can be. They let me touch them, pet them, hold them…no problem. I wonder why that is.

The romaine is going well but what they really like is carrots. I’ll try something new the next time I go to the store.

Pictures incoming. Thanks for the help, everyone!

54

No.

Mine used to do it when you stroked her along the jaw and down the side, or when she was getting some exceptionally nummy treat. There’s a sound sample on the Wiki page.

ETA: 'grats on the piggie acquisition! My guess on the “running when you try to grab them” thing is that they’re a couple tasty little prey animals and you’re an awfully big predator ;). Try coaxing them out with carrots or something? Of course they will learn over time that good things happen after they’re caught, but it’ll speed up the friend-making process if they don’t have that moment of initial panic before getting snagged.

55

Holy moly. Do you need references? Is there a minimum income level so the rodents can be assured of getting Romaine lettuce, bottled water and only the best organic carrots? Do they insist on spay/neuter? Weeeick!

56

the burbling is cute. My cat is now running around looking for the piggy ROFL

57

Oh, I thought MamaZappa was talking about this sound.

58

In our case, we had to fill out a questionnaire (via email) answering what sort of other pets we had, what our cage was like, where the pigs would be kept etc. It was pretty straightforward. Then again, by the time we adopted from a rescue, we’d been piggie-owners for a few months and had done a lot of self-educating so we showed some knowledge.

59

It must suck to be that cute. Even when they’re pissed they’re adorable!

(Like a friend of mine, who is a teentsy, petite-but-athletic-98lbs-on-her-heftiest-day sort of lady. She can fly into a frothing, cursing rage and everyone around her just goes “aww… you’re so cute when you’re mad!” Must make her want to commit homicide, and really, who would vote to convict?)