My mom bought one for my daughter for Easter. (No pics - I don’t have a camera and anyway, if you’ve seen one guinea pig, you’ve seen’em all.) It’s going to be living at my mother’s house since I’m not allowed to have pets where I am and anyway, the girl spends more time over there than she does at home. She named it Guinea.
So, I googled guinea pig care and found out about their dietary needs, and how they need extra vitamin C, and good snacks and supplements and whatnot. But I don’t know anything about guinea pigs personalities. When you gently scratch its tummy, it makes a low, kinda growly, kinda purry, kinda squeaky sound; is that a happy noise or an “I’m about to gnaw your fingers off” noise? Can they be litter trained at all? If they widdle on the carpet, how big a mess does it make and what’s the best way to clean it up?
Can you teach them tricks? How affectionate are they? My mom has rabbits and they’re kind of aloof; they’ll come over and head bump you for a quick pat and then hop away to chew on things. How does a guinea pig compare? Do they like to be held, or do they prefer to stay on the ground like the rabbits? (Incidentally, Mom’s newest rabbit is named Running Bear, and if you’ve ever heard a dumber name for a rabbit then I’d love to know what it is.)
The girl (she’s 7) has fallen madly in love and I don’t foresee any problems with her taking good care of her new little friend. I guess what I really want to know is, do they do anything besides squeak and look perky?
Nope. They squeak and look perky. What else can a seven-year-old expect?!
Seriously, they’re on the same learning curve as rabbits, both for animals and owners. You’ll be able to get him/her familiar with being handled, but they’ll never be a snuggle-asleep-into-your-lap pet. You’ll never litter-train them, but they’re small enough that you’ll be able to mop up in real time, so there’s no permanent damage.
Actually, they taste rather like pork. I’ve had cui a couple times at fancy restaurants in Cuzco, Ecuador. It’s my favorite rodent, with the possible exception of paca.
Our first piggy learned that I came home from work at 3:30 pm and gave her a treat. Mr. S reported that every day at about 3:25, Piggy started squeaking madly. Take from that what you will.
That’s about the extent of interaction we had with our pigs (both this one and the one that followed her. You can “sing” to them and get them to sing back. They get conditioned to things like when you come home and the sound of the carrot peeler. We got great amusement from dumping a bunch of fresh hay on top of them and letting them gradually eat their way out. (Our rather laid-back landlord once saw us taking an overflowing paper sack full of alfalfa upstairs and commented, “What, have you got a horse up there?”) Once in a while we’d take Piggy outside and let her run around in a patch of clover (the equivalent of guinea pig catnip).
I once averted certain disaster when our evil lovebird got loose and went over to investigate the pig in her aquarium, and Piggy naturally stretched up to investigate back. When I grabbed the bird, her sharp beak was about half an inch away from Piggy’s snout and her sharp teeth.
We always just called our pigs Piggy, because, well, what’s the point?
My son’s best friend raises guinea pigs, and they can be a bit more affectionate than rabbits. He has two in particular who seem to enjoy being held and cuddled, even so far as to be Lap Pigs, snuggling quietly on laps while the boys play video games. They travel with him in a little pet carrier and they’re always welcome when they visit.
They are very fun to feed - they like leafy greens and will “snatch” a leaf out of your hand and munch away (hand it to them like you’d hand a sheet of paper to a person.) They also love dandelions, flowers and leaves, so you can send your daughter out to pick your yard (as long as it isn’t sprayed.)
If you put them on your shoulder, they like to climb into hair, like kittens, so if she has long hair, she might want to keep it in braids. Their claws can get long and scrabbley, but they don’t scratch on purpose, nor do they scratch deeply.
The sound you describe sounds like a happy sound. They sound like tribbles. When they’re unhappy, they scream, and there’s no mistaking it for a happy sound.
Nick’s pigs are well socialized and handled a lot as babies, so they’re very friendly. He’s never been bitten in four years of breeding them. (And yes, he’s a very responsible pig breeder - always has a waiting list of good homes before allowing a litter.)
I present to you The Guinea Pig Way! Click on the link on the top of the pic. By the way, guinea pigs can’t make their own vitamin C, so they have to get it from the food they eat, like humans do.
I had them as a kid. At one point I noticed what I thought was tomato slices half eaten in the cage. As it turned out, the thing had been pregnant, then took to snacking on its young. It was pretty gross.
As kids we took them out and played with them. I think its cruel to guinea pigs to give them to children, the’ll squeeze them too hard and drop them. Like we did.
Your link won’t work. Is it the one with the high-pitched guinea pig singing and dancing? If mini-Marli’s pig starts doing that, I’ll smack it with a Bible.
The thing was pretty skittish when they brought it home Saturday, but by evening the girl had it eating out of her hand. And when it sees mini-Marli sitting on her bed watching tv it squeals imperiously for attention which, of course, it promptly gets. It was giving her and me little nips on our fingers; is it trying to bite or warn us about something or are they love nips?
But an OED won’t knock them there demons out of him. How about an annotated King James version with pictures and concordance and attractive leather binding?
The first thing you’ll probably want to do is get a bigger cage, because pet store cages are invariably too small. Here’s mine, which is a pretty reasonable size for two pigs (yes, you need to get another pig, they’re social animals). It is roughly 70 x 140 cm. That might seem a little large but you should remember they’ll be living there for the rest of their lives. It’s made out of wire grids and corrugated plastic and is incredibly easy to clean. Guinea pigs live for up to 8 years so even if you don’t appreciate that now you soon will
Guinea pigs… well, they have a lot of personality. You can’t teach them tricks as such but they’ll learn things on their own. My older one will follow me as I walk around. They like being held but don’t like being picked up (they’re prey animals and instinctively run away from people looming over them). Grab them quickly to avoid scaring them more than you need to.
Oh yeah, I would advise you not to make the pig your daughter’s responsibility. Kids get tired of things pretty quickly and if one day she’s not as enamoured with it as she is now it still needs someone to feed it and change its bedding and give it attention and so on. Resist the urge to use it as a lesson in “responsibility” because it will be the one who suffers.
If you haven’t found these sites already, this is a great medical reference (and has a printable basic care guide) and this site has a lot of info about cages and general care. That’s all, enjoy!
Great links, FlyingRamenMonster. Thanks. Its cage right now is on the smallish side, but I have a sneaking suspicion that once it gets used to everybody, it’s going to spend a lot of time out running around with Mom’s two rabbits. Maybe the pig and the baby bunny can gang up on the big grouchy lop-eared volleyball that thinks it owns the house.
It’s a cute little rodent. We still have no idea what sex it is, though.
Oh yeah, I wanted to add, you should let them out for a bit every day but you don’t really need to free-range them. They tend to pee in familiar places so if you leave litterboxes around the house and train them to use them you can avoid most accidents of that type. Toilet-training is like with rabbits, follow them around until they show signs of wanting to pee, then put them in the litter box until they go and then reward them. If they pee anywhere else clean it up immediately and use an odour remover so they don’t go there again. Poop you can’t really do anything about but they’re dry and easy enough to sweep up. As for the rabbits, don’t house the guinea pig with them and if they show signs of not getting along them just keep them apart altogether because a rabbit can kill a guinea pig with a kick.
