Best cage for guinea pigs

[babybythesea]

We are about (I hope) to get 4 boys as pets for the school I work in.
I am taking primary responsibility for them and they will be coming home with me, not going to families for holidays etc. We have an indoor cage that we can use for transport, but I need a decent hutch for school and for home.

I have two boys at home already and we have a wooden two storey one, where we can open the bottom door, put a run around it and they have space to roam. But the bedroom space would not accommodate four, so we need one that is considerably bigger. It’s also not as sturdy as I would like. When we replace it we need to do so with something much more robust.
If you have multiple pigs, what hutch do you have?

I think general advice would be that a group of 4 boys wouldn't work as you'd come up against dominance fights. The only way to possibly hope to avoid this you'd need a cage size of at least 16sq ft. We have 3 boys who have grown up together as they are brothers and eve they have their moments, they are indoors in a 12sq ft C&C cage.

These are brothers - there’s a litter available at the moment. My two boys (who are brothers) had little spats when they hit about five months, but they are fine together now. I’ve never had more than two pigs together before, would the fighting necessarily be worse? Obviously there would be more spats because there are more of them but would it be more intense?

I will definitely look at this more closely though. Thank you - the boys came up very locally today and we’ve been looking for a while so I needed to move quickly. Off to research now, may be back to the drawing board.

This is only what I've learned since owning our boys so I haven't got too much experience but have done lots of reading on it.
Ours are 15 months now and we're still unsure whether they will be able to stay together as we have 2 who both want to be dominant.
There is a very knowledgeable lady who posts on this board who knows more and may advise better - @70isalimitnotatarget is her username I think.

You can't keep 4 boys together!!! Max two! You will definitely have fighting issues with 4! If you want a bigger group it would have to be females and even then you should have a spare enclosure in the event of fights.

Please do your research properly before getting them. GPs need a lot more space than you think and two story accommodation is not suitable and doesn't count towards the floor space they need.

@babybythesea I can highly recommend a forum called The Guinea Pig Forum which is a fantastic resource for any pig lover.

Unfortunately though neither of the options you are suggesting - four male pigs together (will almost certainly end in disaster, the fact they are littermates will make no difference) - or guineas as classroom pets (not generally recommended as it would be a hugely stressful environment for them) - are probably going to work.

I've attached a couple of links which address these points specifically but I'd recommend having a general look around the forum for advice on pretty much everything pig related - it is brilliant. I have been a guinea pig owner since childhood so I feel I know quite a lot about pigs but I refer to this website all the time for information.

www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/threads/boars-sows-or-mixed-pairs-babies-or-adults.108944/

www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/threads/guinea-pigs-as-classroom-pets-why-not.184735/

Direct quote from the forum on boar groupings for anyone interested:

"What are your boars’ chances of making it together?

• Pairs: the good news is that more baby boar pairs than not make it together. It doesn’t matter whether they are siblings or not; the key to success is whether their individual personalities balance well enough. Two dominant brothers will inevitably clash the same as any other all-dominant pairings.

• Trios: 90% of baby boar trios will not make it to adulthood together. They usually end up with either one dominant boar making war on the other two or two ganging up on a third (bullying). If you are unlucky, you will end up with three boys that won’t get on with any of the others.

• Quartets or quintets: VERY little chance - count yourself lucky if you are one of the very few successful ones that have the space to allow each boy their territory. At the best, you end up with two working pairs, but it is more likely that you end up with one pair and two singles. We even have had a sad case where all four boars fell out with each other.

Please don't be tempted to add another boar to a working couple or to merge two happily bonded boar pairs - it is usually a recipe for mayhem and disaster!

Boars are best kept either in pairs or otherwise in bachelor herds of over 10 boars with ideally at least 1 square metre per boar and separate accommodation available in case of bullying/fights or illness."

(from the "Boars: Teenage, Bullying, Fighting, Fall Outs and What Next?" section, The Guinea Pig Forum)

4 boys isn’t going to work unless you have them neutered, they’ll fight (sadly, sometimes to the death)

Thanks folks, that sorts that out then. Won’t get the boys.

What about having them as 2 pairs in separate cages? You could have a set for key stage 1 and 2?

I’ll have a think. Although we are wanting them for school they won’t be in the classroom. We are a very rural tiny village school, with a massive field alongside the school. The plan is to have a hutch outside in the school field, with each class having a week where they are responsible for looking after them. Also, if we have a child who is particularly stressed, we can take them over for a guinea pig cuddle. Or spending a few minutes with them as a reward. Kind of like a PAT dog but a PAT guinea. If they need to be inside because of bad weather, we want to put them in the library so they can still be accessed by all children. And as I say, weekends and holidays they’d be with me. I just wanted a big hutch recommendation, so the inside accommodation was good enough. My own boys have a double storey one but we also have a run attached to it, and each morning the door is open for them to use both the hutch and run. They get locked into the hutch at night. Was planning to do the same with the school ones, not rely on the hutch exclusively, but the sleeping quarters need to be big enough.
Might look for sows. It was just there were four boys going now.

For two indoor females, we had the 5ft long Ferplast cage from Zooplus, with an extra couple of hiding spaces added. We had three pigs in there for a while, but you could feel the tension rising a notch.

We have 5 in a huge c and c cage in our kitchen diner - 3 girls and 2 neutered boys. You can’t keep 4 boys together, they will fight themselves silly. They need a lot more space than people think they do -‘google c and c cages. We have an 8 x 4 huge cage...!

Also - tiered / double layered cages or hutches aren’t really suitable for guinea pigs. They need as much flat space to run and roam as possible.

kaveecage.co.uk/

Bagels - what about if you attach a run, which is what I do currently? So mine have access to a run outside all day as well as their hutch, they are only confined to the hutch overnight.
I’ll look into those though,

@babybythesea

Bagels - what about if you attach a run, which is what I do currently? So mine have access to a run outside all day as well as their hutch, they are only confined to the hutch overnight. I’ll look into those though,

I think if the run is long enough- ie equivalent to the kind of size of a large c and c cage that’s fine isn’t it? Minimum size for 2 pigs is a 4 x 2 c and c cage - larger is always better obviously. I have never seen a hutch on its own or indoor shop purchased cage that is large enough.

Sorry OP - totally missed the bit about the cage recommendation request!

We have four girls in an indoor C and C cage and I would highly recommend it. The 6x2 (225cm x 75cm approx) C&C cage is a perfect size for the four girls.

For boars, I think the recommendation would be a 5 x 2 for two. You could definitely have two groups of two boars I think, and you can ‘stack’ C&C cages as well. Or you could have a group of four with one neutered boy and three girls (if bonded). We have had that combination in the past and it worked really well.

With our hutch we also have a loft at each end (a 2x2 at one end and a 1x2 at the other) and these are great too. As others have said, loft space cannot count in terms of minimum cage requirement because pigs are ground roaming animals. But I find our lofts are very useful with the larger group because they make the cage more interesting and most importantly gives them different options of places to go if they feel the need for a break from each other. They like hurtling up and down the ramps too (the ramps are very shallow). Lofts also create a natural kind of hidey space underneath which are popular with our four.

Good luck OP!

candcguineapigcages.co.uk

This is the website we bought our set up from. But we fixed the lofts lower down than in the website examples, as that makes the ramps shallower, and easier for pigs to navigate. Have included a photo of our set up which hopefully shows what I mean! The boxes underneath are from IKEA and handy to store their food, hay and so on.

Another vote for C&C cages here (I used to be a part of the breeding and showing world of guinea pigs). They are great cages. No shop bought cage or hutch is ever big enough.

@Bagelsandbrie your set up sounds amazing!

I would love a mahoosive C&C and even more pigs but I think DH would divorce me

We had a C&c cage set up for a while but it felt quite flimsy, and I found it hard to create a sturdy enough lid. In a class full of children, I think a lid would be a good plan.

Try looking up Ferplast Plaza 160 (not 150 as I’d said before).

Agree with other comments on not having 4 boys together.

I do know people who have had big herds of females though.

[quote FlyingPandas]@Bagelsandbrie your set up sounds amazing!

I would love a mahoosive C&C and even more pigs but I think DH would divorce me[/quote]

Dh originally didn’t want any....

Now we have 5.

He has warmed to them, sometimes I go to bed earlier than him and he goes in the kitchen and they all wheek when he opens the fridge and I can hear him talking to them in a fake annoyed Dad type way.... “oh sssssh you don’t want a tea... it’s just me getting the milk! Here have some cucumber...!” Ha!

Love my piggies.