How much do guinea pigs cost to keep?

[KnitsFuriously]

I’m thinking of getting a pair of guinea pigs and am wondering how much I would be looking at spending on bedding/food etc per month? One website states it as £50 a month which is more than we spend on the dog

Are they very expensive to keep? Tia

Good quality hay, vegetables every day & nuggets. Access to grass

£10 per month for hay bale, couple of pound per week for veg

Not expensive but time needed to look after them well

Not very much to feed and keep.

However, as I have recently discovered as expensive as any other pet when it comes to vet treatment. One piggy has recently cost me £300 for 3 vet visits, 2 x courses of ABs, eye ointment and £75 to pts last weekend.

So yeah. Cheap to feed, not so cheap if they get ill.

Thank you for the replies

I have plenty of time, unfortunately just not plenty of money We do have some ‘emergency’ money that we could use for vets etc if we needed to.

@frouby Really sorry to hear that your GP had to be PTS

Ours eat a lot of scraps - vegetable peelings, trimmings etc, so not really expensive to feed. If you keep them on the garden they eat your lawn, so that's free food too. Just a bowl of dry food and a handful of hay a day. I reckon it's under £5 a week.

Not a lot at all. We get £6 food and £6 hay from pets at home which lasts around a month. Veg is whatever we’re having (eat tonnes of leafy greens anyway) or I’ll grab cheap cabbage or spinach etc. Mine get fat on fruit we quickly realised, so that saves money we were wasting when we first got them!

If they’re a bit wriggly you may want to factor in Vets visits for nail clipping.

If you have a garden and can guarantee no pesticides they will be delighted with fresh grass and dandelion leaves, and kale is v easy to grow as well.

Pets at home do good quality hay and sometimes have it on offer. I buy veg on offer or late sale from the local co op. Prices vary for veg and hay so it is what you make it.

I would say a few pounds a week on veg (I don't have grass so maybe I spend more) and about £5 a month on hay.

I also spend on wooden cat litter pellets as it makes them a lot less smelly and easier to keep clean. This is around £6 a bag per month.

All this is I guess around £20 a month for 2 big males

Ours seem to eat their own body weight in hay twice a day, as well as nuggets and fresh food. Luckily we farm, so we don't have to buy the very expensive hay from a pet shop, but even so, i am amazed by how much they consume! Also factor in some bedding material for them and an emergency vet fund. We had some antibiotics for one of them...cost more than we thought.

Thanks everyone. It definitely seems like it could work for us then, nice big garden and have plenty of veg in at home as a rule anyway etc. Just need to work on my DH now

You can keep costs down by keeping away from Amazon, Pounstretchers and Pets@Home

GPs do not need parsley bells, nibble sticks, nibbling hay and other treats - DH is like a child with pocket money whenever we go anywhere that has a small furries section 😉

He does grow parsley though as our girls would kill for it and frequently given bags of it work out quite expensive.
We also grow grass for them in winter or as DH did last winter, daily visit the local park.

It depends a bit what you keep them on. My indoor GP lives on puppy pads and vet bed.

50p a day or so on pads and run the wash with vetbed roughly twice a week just for him. Bag of food and hay each month. Probably £2 of veggies a week.

Works out at about £40 a month. As long as I don't buy any cute fleece/ toys/ extra nibbles for him...

I think my main expense foodwise is hay. I like Jolleys if I'm near the store or one from The Range. Its about £3.70 at The Range , Jolleys is more) One big bag lasts mine a week but I do give them a load of hay.

Redi-Grass when the grass is poor

Veg - market is good for fresh veg if I can get there.

Mine love a Parsley Bell and argue they're not just for Christmas .

Biggest outlay recently was boarding , but this is factored into the holiday budget just like car parking .

Vet bills vary , I think ours have been £40ish
neutering (which was £58) and having GP5 euthanized (which was £30ish) .

We are currently enjoying a dandelion and marigold 'wheel' as a change from parsley bells ... as I've already said keep away from Amazon 😂😂😂

You don't need to buy extra veg for them. If you eat regular fruit and veg as a family there will be plenty for them. So when you chop up a carrot for soup cut off the end and top of the carrot and that's for them. Also the peel they can have.

I always cut a slice off the cucumber off before I start using it and give it to them. Same with the ends of the cucumber.

If I'm chopping peppers I cut the left over awkward bits around the stalk off to give to them. The pieces that can't be easily cut into hummus dipping sticks.

Once I've chopped an apple for the kids (they eat it better when it's chopped and in a bowl than having to go to the effort of putting it up to their mouth and biting it...lazy fuckers) I carefully slice off some bits around the core. (Thsiis for bunnies not sure of gp are allowed them)

Also give them fresh grass etc.

So buy that cheapo wonky veg.

You don't need to be buying them anything fancy. Ime they aren't fussy. And everytime I'm using a veg or fruit I Google to see if they are allowed it. Often they are even if it's only in small amounts etc tops of strawberries.

Mine are fussy little swine , and anything they don't like gets left in the bowl.

Carrot peelings (but they love leafy carrots)
Lambs lettuce (if there's a mix bag they leave things)
Rocket
Parsnip
Turnip
Pumpkin
Some kale I bought them was shoved to the side of the bowl

You can't leave them thinking "Oh if they're hungry they'll eat it" - the veg goes off or they pee in the food bowls

i buy large bags of sawdust, more economical, was buying a hay bale, but it took up so much space

i bought dandelion seeds from amazon

This is one of my girls, Sweetpea! I adore her, and her friend Rosie. They are fairly cheap to keep, as previous posters have said. I live alone and they are great fun. I have cuddles everyday and I wouldn't be without them