Guinea Pig questions...

[blessedx5]

First of all, do any of you have your guinea pig in a bedroom? I guess I didn't do my research and didn't really think of possible allergies but our pig is in our dd's bedroom. She is 9 and really wanted her piggy to be in her room. So far we aren't having any issues but we have also only had her less than 2 weeks.

 

I sure hope we don't have any issues because I have no other place to put her that isn't accessible by the dog or cat :huh:

 

If I get an air purifier in her room will that help?

 

Do guineas get scared easily? I do have a high place I could put the pigs cage but I'm sure the dog might bark at her and I bet that would be enough to stress her out.

 

Also, what type of cage do you use? I was looking at the cages made out of the metal grids like the c&c cages but I need mine covered because of the other animals.

 

Debbie

[West Coast Mom]

We made a C&C cage with a cover. It is hinged and easy to open. Check out the website for directions and materials.

 

Our pigs can get pretty loud at night because they like to do laps around the cage.

[AMJ]

Okay, first, for the health and sanity of your guinea pig (and you!) you need to do some serious reading up on guinea pigs. They are not simply over-sized hamsters, as many think.

 

The typical "guinea pig" cages sold in stores are woefully small -- it would be the equivalent of expecting your child to live his/her life in a half-bathroom. I recommend this website: http://www.guineapig...gcages.com/ as a place to start.

 

We built a cage for our guinea pig, very much like the ones on this website. Once we moved P to her new home it was like we had a totally different piggie! She was happy, ran and played, would talk to us more, and generally enjoyed herself. We made an enclosed cage because we had a cat -- they were friends (got the cat as a too-young kitten when P was full-grown, so P and A bonded), but A plays rough and we didn't want P injured.

 

I highly recommend putting the cage in a main living area, and not in a bedroom. For one thing, guinea pigs are diurnal and they make a LOUD "wheep!" noise when alarmed or they want attention. For another, they are rather social critters, and would hate to be left along all day long when things are going on elsewhere within hearing. We had our cavy (guinea pig) in our living room, in sight of nearly all of our daytime activity. She would watch us, chat with us, and generally was calmer when she wasn't left out.

 

Cavies love lots of veggies, so try several on yours to see what he/she likes. P's favorite food was romaine lettuce -- couldn't get enough of it! The grocery store clerk was amused by us buying several heads a week, on top of other salad fixings (for us).

 

Find a good small animal vet. Your pet's teeth and claws might get long and need trimming -- while nail trimming is possible to do yourself I STRONGLY recommend that teeth trimming only be done by the vet. For a "carrier" we used her original cage, but a cardboard box with an old towel and some bedding will do, too.

 

For bedding only use aspen if you use wood shavings -- any other wood shavings are pine or contain other woods or treatments that have too strong a smell. Guinea pigs have VERY sensitive noses, and they are close to the ground. Don't make them smell cedar, pine, or other "aromatic" stuff all day long. Carefresh is a brand of paper bedding that is very good -- no lint or dust, but it is more expensive than aspen shavings. Don't use cheap paper bedding -- dust and "aromatic" treatments are frequent problems with the cheap stuff. We used Carefresh at one end of her cage and aspen shavings throughout the rest (about 1/4 Carefresh and 3/4 aspen shavings), so she'd have her choice.

 

Make sure your cavy has ample water, and clean the bottle daily. When washing P's water bottle I would first use soap and water, then put in a drop of bleach with 1/2 a bottle of water and shake it about. I then used the bleach water to rinse the cap and tube well, then I rinsed everything again with plain water. This seemed to keep at bay all of the slime and other unpleasant stuff common to our humid environment.

 

Guinea pig life expectancy is generally 3-5 years. Do keep this in mind over the years as your pet ages. The kids will need to know when he/she is getting older and what to expect. It was very rough on our family when P died (roughest on me, to my surprise, aside from our cat). We buried her in the back yard.

 

Enjoy your new pet! They really are a lot of fun!

[blessedx5]

thanks..... we have learned a lot before getting her but I am still learning....trying to wead through some contradictory info and that is frustrating.

 

We have a small house so the bedroom she is in get a lot of traffic but DH says we can move her into the living room.... I just don't know what to do about our dog... he's a hound/lab mix and he will bark at her I'm sure. We also have a cat but she's out most of the time.

 

I ordered some of the grids from walmart earlier for a cage, they are the smaller grid so they should be fine..... what can I use in the bottom though?

[raceNzanesmom]

We used choroplast (corrugated plastic) for the bottom and up a bit on the sides. I liked the side toward the wall to be higher, so they didn't kick bedding out. A sign shop cut it for me. Score the corner lightly to bend. Zip tie everything together- loosely for the lid, so it'll be like hinges. We loved our C&C cages! Lots of room, easy to clean, not super $.

 

This site has excellent info! http://www.guineapigcages.com/index.htm

[AngieW in Texas]

We made a C&C cage for our guinea pig. It is roughly the size of a toddler bed. It is in my 14yo's room, but since she spends quite a bit of time in her room, the guinea pig actually does have company a lot of the time. We have an under-the-bed box in the bathroom that we move the guinea pig to at night (we leave it open).

 

We did have two guinea pigs, but one of them died. I will warn you that our last guinea pig lasted 6.5 years and he was still an energetic piggie right up to the end. Rocky is 4yo now and is blind in both eyes. He isn't diabetic and the vet couldn't find anything else wrong with him. He's just blind now. It doesn't seem to have affected him in any way. He still scrambles up the ramp to go upstairs and get his food. The only thing we can see different is that he used to just pick up his food bowl to throw downstairs and now he also does that with his water bowl sometimes.

 

We use a water bowl rather than a water bottle. The water bowl makes a lot less mess and the rescue we got him from used water bowls, so that's what he was already used to.

 

We use bath towels instead of litter.

[*Lulu*]

We have guinea pigs now and I had several growing up. Any time that we had a dog and then added a pig there was an adjustment period just like with introducing any new animal, but even the dogs that were super focused on the pigs and barked at every move from them eventually settled down. They realized the furry thing in the cage was not going anywhere, not doing anything new and gave up the bulk of the unwanted behaviors.

 

And, while I worried that we might lose a pig to heart failure with the way one of our dogs stalks newcomers, we have never had one die of fright!