Guinea Pigs with a 2 year old

[alr86x]

I am thinking about getting a couple of guinea pigs as indoor pets. I want to know realistically how bad this may smell in the house? If they would be ok with a 2 year old? and how much roughly they cost to keep per month? Pets at home quoted around £60 per month to keep them but this seemed abit high to me so please can some confirm?

Thank you

I wouldn't let a 2-yr-old handle them. Dropping or squeezing them could kill them (I have a now-adult cousin known permanently in the family as Kathy the Pig Strangler after an unfortunate incident as a toddler).

Umm, costs. Hay about £6 a month here, dry food similar, fresh veg quite a lot as they need it daily, so it could easily add up to £50 a month. Mine live in the kitchen, squeak whenever the fridge door opens and scoff all the carrot peel etc as we cook, so I don't really keep tabs.

The unexpected extras have been vet bills £50 anaesthetic to remove hayseeds from the eye, nearly £300 for the same blasted-- unfortunate animal to treat an weird skin condition with everything under the sun.

They can be kept indoors in an indoor cage (the biggest you can find - most sold in pet shops aren't big enough). You need to have 2 pigs as they must have company of their own kind. They can't really just wander the house as they do make quite a mess and will just pee and poop as they fancy. They do need access to a run of some kind - outdoors in summer as they love mowing the lawn and indoor in winter.

Pigs are messy so need almost daily cleaning out - about 20 minutes daily. Dry food is about £6 for a bag which lasts about a month - any leftovers should be thrown away every day and replaced with fresh. Fresh water daily. They need endless supplies of hay and veg daily and this is where the costs can add up. Mine are given the ends of carrots, celery leaves etc which would normally be thrown away, but they also get tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, kale, carrots etc. what they get each day varies. £50-60 a month sounds about right. You should also factor in vets fees. They don't need vaccinations and are usually healthy things, but may occasionally need attention.

They do make great pets for children as they are quite chatty and usually content to sit in laps and be stroked. They also love people to feed them dandelion leaves. You would have to supervise your DC at all times. Please bear in mind that they can live upto 8 years (longer sometimes). There are a lot of pigs languishing in rescues after being abandoned when children lost interest. Only get a pet if you want one, never for a child.

If you're really interested why not try a local rescue or RSPCA and try and rescue some adult pigs. They will already be bonded and happy together and adults are a lot easier to handle than the skittish babies who are lightening fast. I have just got a baby to be a companion to my bereaved 4 year old boy and he is almost impossible to catch. My 2 original boys were 7 months old when I rescued them and at that point were already quite lazy and easy to manage.

One other thing (sorry about the essay), before you get any, check you and your family aren't allergic to pigs or the hay. A good rescue should let you handle a few to check this first or if any friends have pigs, you could visit or offer to pigsit if they're going away. Some people are allergic to all pigs and others just to certain breeds. It's really worth making sure first.

If you have any other questions, please ask again, there's loads of us mad piggie ladies on here

hi air86x

I love our guinea-pigs. My piggies ( we have a trio. GP4 (DD pig) GP5 (mine) both sows. GP6 (our new neutered boar) is DD pig.

They are lovely, chatty, very vunerable little creatures.

When my piggies are indoors for winter, the hay gets flipping everywhere. I ended up giving mine hay cookies to cut down on the mess (they had hay in their Pighouse). The hay smells more than the piggies do.

We converted my DC wooden playhouse into the Pighouse when DD got her two rescue boars (GP1 and GP2)

I wouldn't trust mine free ranging indoors TBH, apart from the mess they would chew wires,cables,any soft furnishings......)
And they can get into spaces you wouldn't credit .

A 2 year old could sit with a piggie in a blanket but I wouldn't let them lift a piggie. They struggle and get scared if they feel unsafe and contrary to what lots of sellers will tell you, they can bite. My GP5 is a toothy piggie. I know it's a gnaw. DD knows it;s a gnaw. A small child will say it's a bite (which to them it would be)

Food - I buy the pellets, we have veg (DH and I are vegetarian, and I buy Piggie veg)
It's the hay that costs me the most (I buy a £3.60 bag a week) I do use too much I know.

Just bought Megazorb for when they bond (£18 bag).
And mine need daily cleaning - newspaper and hay. They are messy little creatures, especially the sows. Pee everywhere

Cages, runs, food bowls, water bottles is a one off expense.
And the piggies themselves (usually Rescues ask £10 a hog )

They can get quite smelly if their hutch is not cleaned out weekly minimum. They certainly don't cost £60 a month. We used to have them when i was growing up and apart from grain, we just fed them left over bits of veg and salad, bread, and mostly grass from the garden. They make perfect pets as they are very gentle and patient. Best get them in a pair though as they need their own company!

Oh and YY to the allergies.
My DD was fine with our first pair but when we got GP3, she was allergic to his fur.
And it looks like she has a slight allergy to our new boar

Hay is a huge allergenic problem too.

Some excellent advice here OP.

I have four guinea pigs, two neutered boar and sow pairings, who live indoors. I also have a 2 year old (and two older DC). Our pigs get cleaned out twice weekly and don't tend to smell of anything but hay in between. Occasionally get a bit more whiffy when the girls are in season but that's about it.

Toddlers and guinea pigs can most definitely be compatible as long as you are sensible i.e. any indoor hutch must be absolutely toddler proof (I have padlocks on the side doors of ours) and yy to not letting them handle the pigs independently. My 2yo is allowed to stroke them if I'm holding them, or have one sitting on his lap if I am sat there right next to him the whole time, he is allowed to feed them parsley etc under supervision, but that's about it. You will need to be careful about any handling the toddler does because they will inevitably want to squeeze them too hard, or poke their eyes because they're nice and shiny, etc etc.

That said, I have found that our current guineas seem a LOT more confident for living indoors and they are certainly capable of getting used to young children. I had pigs throughout my own childhood (from age 4 until I went to uni at 18) and they always lived in hutches in the shed and were much more nervy and shy than my current pigs are. Guineas are nervous prey animals by nature, of course, but ours are amazingly social and confident. I think basically they are so used to the daily noise and clutter of our family life that nothing really fazes them.

Some of the books/websites say that gps need a quiet environment, but I agree with diet coke - they get used to noise. Our two gps live inside and are fine with the hoover right by their cage, children being normal noisy children etc. They don't seem to mind at all. What does send them scuttling for cover is if the room is silent and then someone walks near or past the cage - the sudden movement is a lot more alarming to them than constant busy-ness.

Also be aware that even though you can probably teach your two year old not to bang the cage/poke fingers in etc, visiting children are a different matter. I really keep on top of it when we have young children to play, as weirdly I've found their parents often allow them to shout at the guinea pigs or bang on the bars. So I make sure I am close enough to speak to or pick up the offending child straight away before the guineas get too frightened.