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Guinea pigs

Vitamin C, respiratory trouble, and getting the cage size right.

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Guinea pigsMichael14d agoWhich vegetables does yours actually eat?Every guinea pig seems to hold strong and completely arbitrary opinions. Bell pepper is the usual winner and past that it is chaos. What gets eaten immediately, and what gets ignored every single time?0 repliesNo vet yet
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Guinea pigsPawsRx Team14d agoWhat is your guinea pig setup, and what would you change about it?Cage or C&C grids, which bedding, how you handle cleaning. And the honest half: what you would do differently starting over. The second version is always better than the first.0 repliesNo vet yet
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Guinea pigsNate15d agoAlmost every cage sold for guinea pigs is too small, and one pig alone is its own problemTwo things the pet store gets wrong at the same time. Size first. The cages marketed for guinea pigs are mostly built to a hamster footprint and priced for an impulse buy. The figure used across rescue and veterinary guidance is around 7.5 square feet for a single pig and about 10.5 square feet for a pair, and honestly the pair number should be your floor even for one. Guinea pigs don't climb and don't use vertical space, so floor area is the only number that counts. Tubes and second levels are decoration. They popcorn and they sprint and they need a straight runway to do either. This is the rare pet welfare problem you can fix with a tape measure and one purchase. Second, they're herd animals, and a lone guinea pig is a stressed guinea pig. Switzerland went as far as making it illegal to keep just one, which tells you roughly how settled the question is. Two females, or a neutered male with a female, is the standard pairing. Two males can absolutely work but wants more space and a slower introduction. While we're in here, bedding. Skip cedar entirely and avoid raw pine shavings. The aromatic oils irritate their airways, and respiratory infection is one of the most common reasons a guinea pig ends up at a vet at all. Kiln dried pine, aspen, paper bedding, or fleece over an absorbent layer are all fine. Respiratory signs to know, since this is the thing most likely to actually kill one: crackly or clicking breathing, discharge from the nose or eyes, sneezing that doesn't let up, sitting hunched with the eyes half closed, not eating. Guinea pigs mask illness well and then fall off a cliff, so that's a call the vet today list, not a watch it for a week list.0 repliesNo vet yet
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Guinea pigsMichael15d agoGuinea pigs cannot make their own vitamin C, and the water drops do not workGuinea pigs are in a very small club with humans and primates. They're missing the enzyme that makes vitamin C, so every bit of it has to arrive in what they eat. Get that wrong and you get scurvy, and it's not some rare textbook thing, it's one of the most common problems vets see in pet guinea pigs. The number the veterinary references give is roughly 10 mg per kg per day for a healthy adult and around 30 mg per kg for young, pregnant or sick pigs. In practice that usually gets quoted as about 20 to 25 mg a day for a normal adult. Now the part that catches people, because it's sold in every pet store. Those vitamin C drops you add to the water bottle are close to useless. Ascorbic acid falls apart fast in water, light and heat, and the figure that gets cited is that after about 8 hours you're down to something like 20 percent of what you put in. On top of that it changes the taste, so some pigs drink less, which is its own separate problem. What actually works is fresh food and fresh pellets. Bell pepper is the easy daily win, red or green, and by weight it carries more vitamin C than orange does. Parsley and cilantro are good too. Guinea pig pellets are fortified but the vitamin C degrades on the shelf over a few months, so buy small bags, look at the mill date rather than just the expiry, and resist buying in bulk to save money. If you want to supplement directly, use a chewable tablet at a dose a vet gives you, not the water additive. Early scurvy looks like a pig who doesn't want to move, a rough coat, swollen or sore joints, a limp, poor appetite, and small wounds that won't heal. It's very easy to file all of that under getting old.0 repliesNo vet yet

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