advice on guineas please :)

[Zazzabeans]

bought the dcs 2 guinea pigs on Monday, they will NOT come out of their cage and when we try to pick them up they keep scarpering very fast.
dh has spent hours since mon trying to coax them from their cage, but they wont sad
I have cleaned the cage thoroughly twice but can only do one end at a time with them being in the other end to where I am cleaning.
the lady at pets at home said they need to be petted for an hour a day with plenty of exercise, however this is proving very difficult.
any advice?

Gps are prey animals and can be very skittish when little. If you only got them on Monday then it is very early days. They need time to settle in at least a few weeks. Keep spending time around them , offer food from your hands etc. keep the children calm and quiet around them.
Be careful when picking them up that you don't grab their back legs as they try to run.
When the dc are holding them stay with them at all times and make sure the dc are seated. Don't let the dc carry them about as the GP may seriously hurt themselves if they jump.
There is hope, lardy pig is very easy to catch and even Gordy pig is much easier and he was a bit freaky when we got him.

that's the thing, we cant pick them up to hold them as they are petrified :(

I've just put a post in Chat on your thread Zazza

When we got our girls, they were quarentined in our 4'x2' cage ( we put them in the Pighouse with our boar but he was only in chatting range, until he was past his neutering stage)

Even in that space they ran round and my little sow (photos on the Guinea-Pig Wedding Thread hint hint ) would climb the bars
We had a rubber garden trug with a door cut in as their housie. If we put it on one side and gently pushed them into a corner, they'd run into the trug and we could catch them.
No scaring, they would try to leg it, but there wasn't anyway to go. The trug was familiar so they went there.

GPs don't really come up to you, not like other animals. You have to get them but they realise it's worth their while to have cuddles and the odd treat

Our boar is the easiest to catch, once he's in the travel box (to bring them inside) the girls seem to accept it, they don't want left behind.

I've left a message for you70 in chat.

Answered it I'm leaping from one to another .

Just lift their house up and pick them up from there. Ours run off but once you've got them on your knee for cuddles they are perfectly happy. They will soon get used to you, but even then their natural instinct will be to dart into their house when they see your great big hand swooping down to pick them up.

70, our middle sow will come up to say hello luckily, as she eloped from her garden pen at dusk last week! I had visions of quartering the garden for a coal-black pig in the dark, but fortunately she just trundled straight over to see if I had any parsley-- thing worth eating.

OP, you need to talk to the stomach, with guinea pigs. Offer parsley bits of fresh veg whenever you go past the cage. They soon catch on to that one.

Zazza - snap! I got two GPs last Monday too and am having some difficulty catching them! After advice on here I'm using food to encourage them - DSs and I are all having some time every day feeding them bits of vegetables by hand. One is getting a lot more than the other as he's much happier to come for it, but they've both taken some bits from our hands with us just standing still with it. The braver one has let DS2 and I stroke him a little, but the other grabs his food and runs! The only way I've got them out to clean the cage is to take their covered area of the cage off and put in their travel box so they run into it.

On Saturday when I put them outside they hid in their outdoor covered area for four hours. After that shy GP ran straight back into his travel box to go inside but the braver one didn't, so I left him while I took the shy one indoors and when I came back he seemed to be having the time of his life munching the grass and playing about .

I'm assuming it's just going to take lots of time and patience - I can see some difference in a week, and I'm hoping if I persevere we'll get to pick them up eventually. Nice to hear how someone else is getting on at the same stage!