Anyone around for some guinea pig chat?

[plus2new]

Looking for a chat with some other pig owners.

We've had ours for a few weeks now and just looking for reassurance.

We still have them in their hutch indoors. I intended to put them outside but not so sure now. I think I am being a bit PFBGP about them which I didn't expect . I keep waiting for the weather to improve but so far it's been too wet/cold/windy.

Food wise I think they have reached a toddler stage - they are picky about their muesli and leaving some parts in favour of others. I think a plain food is recommended but they don't have it in local pet shop.

Also they seem to love parsley, cucumber and spinach but I'm not sure these are the best foods for them. I know cucumber is high in water and parsley and spinach have a lot of calcium. My gps are only 2 months old so are the higher calcium foods ok at this age?

They have refused to eat peppers of any colour. They did eat carrot but rejected it the last few times I tried it. The same with broccoli, after eating it the first few times they won't eat it now.

They like lettuce, is this better than spinach?

I haven't tried parsnip, cauliflower, or other veg yet. Any recommendations?

Sorry this is so long. I have more questions so I'll pop back later.

Thanks

Hi

Because their legs are so short and their bodies so close to the ground, it's best to keep them indoors when the weather is bad, as they can catch chills.

Sounds like your two are doing fine. They are all different personalities with different likes and dislikes, so it's trial and error but here are some things we found useful:

Pet shops say give pellets not muesli as they cherrypick from the muesli. IME they just leave the pellets full stop, so muesli it is!

If they go outside on the grass, they can pick up mites. Mites look like dandruff at first and are very uncomfortable. You can get small animal anti-mite spray from pet shops. Give them some of this before their first day on the grass and then occasionally after that.

Buy nail clippers (special ones for guinea pigs.) Their nails grow a lot. Clip often or the quicks will grow long and then it hurts when you trim them back :(

Just give a wide variety of food. They go through fads. Ours didn't touch peppers but now nosh them. Spinach and lettuce only in small amounts as it can make their joints ache apparently.

Parsley is great. My boars love celery, fennel, grass, dandelions (again in smallish quantities) broccoli and stalks, peppers, bits of parsnip, carrot, apple, chard, spinach, outer leaves from cauliflowers and green beans. But some days they'll scoff certain things and other days not touch them. they are going through a rebellion against carrot at the moment. Helps to give a lot of variety each day.

Ours are very sniffy about mangetout or sugar snaps and asparagus trimmings. They love apple leaves fresh from the tree and have been known to nosh far too many holly and bay leaves when let out at Christmas! (They survived.)

They need to gnaw - give them gnawing toys or branches from edible trees (eg applewood) and inner tubes from kitchen rolls.

Must have loads of hay every day.

They love cuddles and love to chatter. IMO they are the friendliest, cutest and cuddliest of all the small animals.

Yoo hoo and welcome to the lovely world of guineas, there are lots of lovely folk on here who will help and advise, I am a bit of a visitor now, because sadly haven't been able to have any new guineas since moving house, despite having 9 over the last 6 years! It sounds like they are very happy and settling in nicely - it is nice for them if they can go out and mow your lawn, but it does need to be dry - try them in a run with an igloo for an hour and then build the time up slowly so they get used to eating gras. Best food is excel/exel, orange bag pellets with lots of vit C - I used to order mine on line as the local vets charged a fortune for it!!

All the foodstuffs you mention are fine, (except lettuce, not recommended for guineas - )70 had a brilliant food thread recently which will help you - try them with all sorts, everything ranging from bananas, to bread, to carrots etc, they need lots of vit C. They can get a bit arsey with the 'same' food, so good to offer them a variety, mine loved banana skins, and carrot tops etc, and adored raiding the spinach supplies in the garden. Enjoy them, they are wonderful happy creatures and will earn their keep by mowing your garden and providing wonderful manure pellets to keep the grass green - win-win situation! :) :)

Hi plus2 yes we can chat about guinea-pigs all night and day here

There are loads and loads of threads to browse through- GP food, GP behaviour (good and bad), their body language and vocals (they have such a range, it's not just 'squeak' )

The thread guineapiglet mentioned is in celebration of all the new piggies to SuperFurryAnimals and what they like.

I always give veg for breakfast and supper (GPs are active dusk and dawn and will spend the later hours doing their pooh eating nice but it's essential)

It depends where you are in the country, my boys went out to their Pighouse (it's a wooden Playhouse so enclosed, we can open the re-inforced window for them ) in late March IIRC, the weather was nice but they still had a heater at night while it was chilly. Mine are adults though and have very deep hay bedding to snuggle in.

They are very individual when it comes to food, and will turn their snouts up at things they previously ate happily.

When you do let let out on the grass make sure they are secure against predators, have shelter and restrict them to an hour to begin with to avoid bloat. Build up slowly.

Weigh your guinea-pigs regularly, keep a check on their weight- it's a good indicator if something is amiss healthwise.

Make sure they always have clean water daily , even if they don't drink it, it's there for them.

I'm sure before long we'll need some "Hot Weather Hogs" threads. They suffer heatstroke easily and are at risk of flystrike but both can be avoided (but it's difficult to completely eliminate the risk )

I got GP3 as a 6 weeker, he was already eating Burgess Excell but if you do need to change food, mix it with the original to get them used to it.
I gave the new boy Alfalfa hay for the first couple of weeks , but they can't have this as adults (unless pg or feeding) as it's too high in calcium.

You do need to be careful with calcium rich food, they are prone to kidney stones.

Mine won't entertain carrot unless it's got the leaves. Or green pepper. Or celery stalks but love celery leaves.
But they are lovely little animals , chatty, friendly. And when they popcorn , you can forgive them anything.
Yes GP3 , 30 seconds popcorning round the run excuses you for peeing on me last week

Not only short legs and low slung bellies , their faces are right in their bedding so you need to be aware of respiratory risk.
That's why things like sawdust and woodshavings aren't recommended ( and What The Jeff is lemon/lavender scented shavings all about? Just clean the cage more often )

If you have fleece or VetBed, wash in neutral non scented (I use Ecover or those wash ball thingies. OK they don't get the washing clean but piggies don't complain about the odd pooh stain )

Our vet told us to give them what is available naturally - lots of hay, fresh grass, vegetables such as lettuce, cucumber and celery daily, other vegetables such as spanich, parsley, tomato, grapes and carrot occasionally.

You might want to weight them to make sure one piggie is not eating all the food.

We have two middle age rescue guinea pigs at home. They love their lettuce and parsley. They would not touch any bell pepper.

Welcome to the lovely world of piggies! Since having our boys my shopping trolley looks so much healthier - we are lots of veg before but that has increased dramatically.

It is better to feed them pellets as they get a balanced diet. Mine only eat P@H nuggets. If you are wanting to switch them to nuggets, gradually mix a small amount in with their usual food and keep increasing the amount until they are used to it.

My piggies eat peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, basil, lavender, kale, sometimes carrots, celery an yesterday were thrilled to receive some huge dandelion leaves from a kind neighbour.

Thanks for all the replies.

I did a quick supermarket run this morning and got some kale, some chard and some lamb's lettuce. I'll try them with that lot to start with and then add in some new veggies as time goes on.

In terms of going outside how dry does it have to be for them to go into a run on the grass? We are in Ireland so totally dry days are few and far between, even in summer. Today for example it hasn't rained but it is overcast and chilly and grass hasn't dried off.

Also the grass area we will be putting the run on has dandelion which I know is fine but there are other weeds growing there too - should I try to weed a safe area for them?

The piggies know the sound of my voice now and when they hear me talking they go mad, they practically explode with excitement when they hear their food bag rustling.

They are very tame know and will eat from our hands but we haven't been handling them much at all. I hate having to corner them to pick them up but they are still timid and run away so mostly we just talk to them in the hutch and feed them tidbits and stroke their heads if they let us.

Will they get more comfortable being picked up if we persist or should be give them more time and wait til they are older?

Persist with picking up and when you pick them up give them a treat (pigs respond well to bribery).

I put mine out if it's warm enough and not raining. If the grass is damp I put their run overlapping the path a bit and then stick an old towel down on the path with their igloos on it so they have somewhere dry to laze around. Sometimes I just stick a towel down on the grass for them. If it's a bit windy I have been known to peg an old towel around their run as a windbreak (I have masses of old towels now as my mum and all her friends send me theirs).

They aren't supposed to eat buttercup so dig that out if you can (we have just dug out a large square of lawn as it was infested with the stuff so I'm going to re-turf that bit).

DD and I took the piggies supper out tonight. GP3 was sitting on the empty breakfast plate.

"Oh, look, if he was in Peru he'd be lunch, he's already on a plate" (GP3 would be a good meal for 2 )

DD gave me a Death Stare

Smoothpig looks like he'd be a good meal for a large family but I suspect most of it is fat. The small amount of meat would probably just taste of cucumber. I think Scruffy is mainly gristle. Better just get meat from the supermarket instead. Got to go this morning as they've just given me their list - 4 tubs of parsley, 12 cucumbers ......

I googled something about guinea pig food recently and was a bit to see spit roasted guinea pigs! That was NOT what I was looking for.
Frantic close tabbing ensued before the dc noticed and thought I was thinking of cooking their pets

Keep the picture in case your pigs misbehave and need to be reminded what a good life they have

It never hurts to remind them that in another time zone they'd be on a plate.

Though there's a video on YouTube that DD was watching - dozens, possibly hundreds of guineas in a large concrete pen surging forward for grain. No veg in evidence.
You can only hope that they'd all eat and escape unscathed.......but I don't think that's the case
Though it just shows the difference between pet cavy, food cavy and wild cavy.