Tell me about your guinea pigs!

[Loolibat]

Posting in chat rather than small pets for more traffic.

Two lovely little guinea pigs have recently joined our household and I already love them to bits! I've had guinea pigs most of my life but it's been a few years since we lost the last one.

These two pigs are absolutely brilliant - 2 females, (Bandit) a black and white one with Abyssinian kind of fur and her sister (Patch) who has very smooth tri colour hair and a crest.

They are absolutely adorable, funny, friendly and chatty. Patch is the one who melts on people more and looks like a furry pancake, she popcorns a lot and absolutely loves cucumber. Bandit is more shy but she's the chatty one and gets so excited when I put fresh hay in the cage that she fell over backwards yesterday. She will climb up on the roof of her house and try to chew through the bottom of the paper bag which contains grass clippings. She also tries to run up my dressing gown sleeve.

The noises they make are so brilliant and I love the fact they're always so enthusiastic about everything. These two are very confident and will approach anyone who comes near the cage. They really are fantastic pets and I love all their quirks and everything about them!

I love pigs and I'd love to hear about fellow MNetters pigs, any funny stories about them and what everyone else loves about guinea pigs!

Aww guineapigs are great

I had two about 5 years ago called Luigi and Mario luigi had long gingery hair and Mario was black with a ginger nose.
The girls chose them
They are so friendly and used to squeak really loud when we went near them

We've moved ours back outside this week after being inside over winter. Ours are two girls, Eli and Pilou (DD named them ).

Eli is long hair and black and white. Pilou short hair and brown with a caramel stripe down her side. Lots of popcorning or bubbling as we call it. lots of wheeking if I every time they heard the fridge open. Obsessed with cucumber, broccoli and parsley.

I'd come home from work and they'd go crazy wheeking. They knew who fed them

Grandchildrens guinea pigs. One wiggled through bars of cage and got stuck behind the freezer! McFloofface other one is Hazelnut

They really do learn to recognise sounds! When I was little the ones I had figured out it was my DDad who went into the garden to cut grass for them. They learned to recognise the key opening the back door sound, then the utensils pot rattling for the scissors to come out, then the front door opening when he got home from work and finally the sound of his car wheels crunching on the gravel. So they'd go batty when they heard the car pulling onto the drive as they knew what that meant!

We love our guinea pigs! We have Moonpig who is black with a little white bit and Twix who is ginger. Twix is quiet and chilled and Moonpig is inquisitive and cheeky and likes to sit on her sisters head. They are coming up 2 years old. Since getting them we have dedicated a whole room to them (quickly realised their cage would be too small), subscribed to a guinea pig magazine, and bought many guinea pig related items both for them and for the house and kids (T shirts, stickers, colouring books, notepads...) - they have taken over our lives.

@HarkAVagrant they're absolutely lovely! Moonpig is such a good name to go with the markings!

Mine have a cage as they live indoors but I'm currently building them a big pig pen so they've got the run of most of the room (albeit a fenced off area so they can't come to any harm)

Here are the two lovely piggies!

And Patch doing her best impression of a furry sausage!

We have lockdown guineas! We got them on New Years Eve and they have really helped us all through this long boring winter. The dc love them so much; they are the only thing that can compete with screens for their attention, and I’m a complete sucker for going and snipping them some grass when they wheek at me.

They’ve been living inside in the pantry but will be moving outside when the weather gets warmer. I’ve ordered them a massive hutch and a massive walk-in run - Dh keeps complaining about how expensive they are .

They’re both girls; Minty (white with brown cheeks) and is very chilled and goes to sleep on my lap, and gives ds kisses on the nose.

Poffertje (a sort of puffed up Dutch pancake) is a strawberry roan Abyssinian and quite highly strung. She bites if she gets the chance, and is quite the noisiest guinea pig I’ve ever met - she never shuts up wittering and she’s LOUD.

They were both rescues from when a local breeder died and left 700 guinea pigs in very poor health, which were then rehomed by various animal rescues.

@VenusClapTrap they're beautiful and really good they were rescued! I've become a sucker for buying pig accessories - I realised I've spent far more on them than myself in the last couple of months! I see you have the hay pigs circus bed too! I thought they were such lovely things I got them the set, not bloody cheap!

Aw, love the furry sausage!

Can see how she got out if they can stretch out that skinny

@Whingey they can stretch out to be very slim! You'd be surprised what they can fit through. Bandit was trying to stick her head through the little window in her house and I thought she'd get stuck, then she squeezed her whole body through it! If she keeps doing that I may end up having to cut it off her

If anyone else would like to share pictures of their piggies that would be really nice!

Yes we were bought the Haypigs circus set for Christmas by SIL! They love the cannonball seesaw

This was Bruce, sadly departed now, but just the most gorgeous boy. Loved watermelon and cauliflower leaves.
He and his brother were rescue piggies (most of ours gave been).

At our highest amount we had 12. My favourite thing is the completely seperate personalities of all of them. I honestly find it amazing.
My darling guinea pig (third one i got & the reason i got 9 more!) Died 2 years ago and we still all speak about him like he was a human. He once escaped from his cage and we found him on the doorstep in the morning waiting for us !! He was super loving (tad weird for a guinea pig but takes all types!)

We had a beautiful blind guinea pig too, it was hard when her cage mate died but our group of 4 girls took her in lovely.

We only have 4 left now, 3 girls and 1 boy. I dont know what we will do when we are down to one, but it genuingly hurt us losing the others so we wont get any more.

All of ours but 2 was rescues from different areas over the years, so many of them came to us already quite old / not kept properly. One came with her nails and teeth so bad we could of cried, we actually paid the owner £20 to save her just to get her away - they gracefully gifted us a roses tin full of rabbit food they had been feeding her

I love guinea pigs too. I don't have any at the moment because we have too many foxes locally but when I was a child we had them. They are such lovely pets.

There was something on BBC South a few months ago about a lady who had taken in piggies from a rescue centre which had closed due to covid, I think she had about 72 of them in her conservatory!

@QueenofLouisiana Bruce was absolutely beautiful! I'm sorry for your loss, it's heartbreaking when they go but it's great he had a good home with you!

@Danni91 they really are wonderful and I can't believe what different personalities they have! Some have been similar to others I've had but they really do have their own very distinct personalities when you get to know them. I think people struggle to believe that because they're just little rodents. I'm so glad you managed to rescue the one you did, poor little pig. I'm so pleased you were able to take her away and give her a good home.