Guinea pigs, cute, adorable, and overall a great household pet. As an owner of four Guinea pigs, I have learned how to take care of them best over the last 3 years. Guinea pigs make great pets, children love them and they are not high maintenance. This guide will go over how to take care of your guinea pigs and how to make their life as fulfilled as possible.
As an owner, I suggest you buy at the very least, two guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are extremely social and friendly towards other guinea pigs, they need another buddy to live alongside them otherwise they just slouch around all day. Trust me, its best to get two females together, they never fight and love to play.
After you purchase your guinea pigs, you should look into buying a big cage. Do not buy cages from the store, they are far too small for guinea pigs, even though the store clerks might tell you they are big enough. Guinea pigs grow quickly and need a lot of space. If you constrict them to a tiny cage, they will suffer and become agitated.
A guinea pig needs at least 7.5 square feet of space, and if you have two, which you should, 10.5 square feet of room in the cage is the preferred amount of space. I bought my cage on guineapigcages.com and I must say my guinea pigs love it.
Clean bedding should be the next thing you look into. If you are housing guinea pigs in a large enough cage, you should clean the cage at least once a week. My 4 guinea pigs enjoy a custom built 3×5 grid cage that we clean once a week. As for which type of bedding you should provide your piggies? CareFresh is the best by far, especially when the guineas are young. Now a days, I find that Aspen and pine bedding works well, it’s cheaper and comes in bigger amounts. Do NOT in any case buy Cedar bedding. It’s toxic to the guinea pigs and will give them numerous health problems.
Alright, so now, you should have the cage, the bedding and the piggies. Next thing on the list should be food. Pet stores such as Petsmart sell specially made guinea pig food. Buy a bag and a bowl to place the food in and you’ll be fine on that end. Provide guinea pigs with fresh water daily and make sure to add vitamin C to the water. Guinea pigs do not manufacture their own vitamin C so adding it in to the water is essential to their health and growth. Hay is also very important; it grinds down their teeth and gives them plenty of nutrients. Make sure your guinea pigs always have hay in their cage. Guinea pigs love fresh vegetables. In my household, it’s a daily thing with the piggies. Every morning we wake up and as we enter the living room, all the piggies are making noise asking for their fresh lettuce. They love fresh vegetables, so if you can afford some greens, you should definitely let your piggies have some daily.
Floor time is essential to your bonding with your guinea pigs. If possible, take your guinea pigs out of their cages daily and have them run around a safe zone in the house. We trained our piggies to stay on our giant rug in the living room; they don’t dare leave the safety of the rug. They run around, chase each other and hop like crazy. The most important part of “floor time” is to interact with the piggies. Give them snacks, create a few small obstacles/ tunnels and let them have fun. We usually place a few tunnels, guinea pig igloos and a bowl of dry food out. They love their time out of the cages and we enjoy watching them interact and play together.
As you can see, it doesn’t take much to take care of your guinea pigs and provide them with everything they need. Guinea pigs are a joy to watch and interact with and the best part is that they are easily taken care of. I hope you enjoy caring for your piggies as much as we do!
