Have you insured your guinea pig/Rabbit?

[HamCob]

I've had some fairly eye watering vet bills from cat ownership in the past and would always insure a cat now.
Just wondered how high maintenance smaller animals are? Happy to pay the odd £50 here and there but do get they sick often as a rule & if so does it tend to be mega expensive?
Just weighing up whether it's worth paying monthly for insurance or if should just put some money to one side each month

I don't know how typical ours are but our most recent pair of guineas have probably been the sickliest/most frequent vet visitors we've had. In 5 years we've had 2 x eye infections/hay fluke in the eye incidents requiring eye drops and antibiotics, and 3 x cystitis/kidney stones episodes requiring anti-inflammatories, metacam and antibiotics... all probably costing in the region of £100 per time to resolve. The most recent cystitis episode the vet was making noises about scanning under GA which would have been much more expensive, but we declined that (on welfare grounds, not cost - GA very dangerous for piggies especially elderly ones and there's a substantial risk of them not coming round. She passed the stone naturally with the help of the drugs/painkillers and is fine now ) .

I did look up pig insurance when we got them and it was really expensive, more expensive than the cat, something like £50 pcm for the two of them, so I think we've come out on top by just paying vets bills ourselves. I think it helps that unlike with a larger animal I would be highly likely to decline any surgical intervention for a small animal as it's just so risky and traumatic for the little ones, and that means you are unlikely to have really sky high bills for them (but do need to be emotionally prepared for sudden deaths/need to PTS if they get sick )

We paid £400 for a broken leg and £80 for an eye infection 😭 We looked into insurance but it’s still probably cheaper to pay out of pocket. We couldn’t justify paying for more expensive treatments.

Good grief! £400!
I naively thought smaller animals might not be as pricey!
Thank you both, I think I will set a small amount a month aside as you have and cross my fingers that they live healthy lives!

HamCob it wasn’t helped by the pig breaking its leg at night on a bank holiday weekend - the emergency night appointment fee was not cheap.....!

Good question - I'm in a dilemma as my mini Rex has what looks like a dinky abscess and I'm in that I should have insured him panic again. I'm expecting the Bill to be around £300 but I'll take this one on the chin. I think putting a few quid aside each month is better than a plan but just my opinion.

My rabbits are insured with Petplan. One overnight with gut stasis earlier in the year racked up a £500 bill, thankfully Petplan covered me.