This is our Guinea Pig Information Page! We hope to share our acquired information about guinea pigs.

This many piggy people have been here since 10/10/98!

You have found this page - Welcome! This is for all guinea pig lovers, owners and slaves to the little critters!

The FIRST thing you need to know about guinea pigs is that they are VERY CUTE!

Unlike fish, you CAN play with them! They love to play and be held.

Unlike hamsters, Guinea Pigs are not nocturnal creatures - they will be awake when you want to play with them! They are also bigger than hamsters, and more rugged. They can take more from kids and love kids too! They love to be brushed, and will even tolerate the kids dressing them up! (picture forthcoming!)

Guinea Pigs are very cute critters. They each have a different personalities! They can make many different noises - some guinea pig afficionados say up to 39 different sounds!

They learn the sound of the refrigerator opening, and let you know they want something out of it too! (Like lettuce, carrots, etc)

Please keep in mind that I am not a Vetrinarian, though I play one on T.V.! I am a guinea pig lover, and own a few. Most of this information is a composite of what I have learned about Guinea Pigs. I have read books, magazines, and have just plain had experience with owning 3 of the cute critters and getting to know all of their babies!

Click to get to your desired place!
• For their Food likes and needs.
• For their Friends.
• To learn about the types of Homes they like.
  
• For their Bedding needs.
• For info on Illnesses they are prone to.

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FOOD

• They LOVE veggies & fruits: carrots, green beans, lettuce, apples, pears, just to name a few.
  
• They NEED to eat the pellet food from the stores - it has many vitamins that they need and would die without.
  
• My sister, a real Vetrinarian, has told me that piggies also need as much timothy hay as pellets - note: NOT alfalfa. That is more of a snack.
• They like oats as a treat too!

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  SOCIAL CREATURES
• They are social creatures and like to have a friend or roommate!
  
• My piggies will sit on my shoulder as I work on the computer or walk around. They love to be held!
• Just remember, when holding them, they like to chew and they may just chew a hole in your favorite shirt if you are not careful!
• They are VERY good with children since they are usually good tempered and also not as fragile as gerbils and hamsters.


• They love to be stroked - and even more, love to be brushed! You can find some places, when you pet them, that evoke them to make really cute sounds!
• Females get along with each other very well, as long as they are gotten close to the same time. We had one for 6 months before we got our second, and the first one was jealous, but they like each other now! (most of the time!)
  
• Males do not get along in the same cage - even, I'm told, if they are littermates.
  
• They can be taught tricks, if you have time & patience! Just look at the guinea pig in "Doctor Dolittle". He (played by a she) learned some of her tricks in just 5 days!
  
• They are usually very good mothers, whether they have had the experience of watching other pigs or not.
  
• CAUTION!!!!! If you want your piggy to have babies: for a female, it is VERY important to have her bred BEFORE she is a year old!!!!
  Her pelvis can fuse closed and it may KILL both her and her babies if she can't deliver! A vetrinarian can perform a c-section, but they are often unsuccessful mostly because people wait too long to bring them to the vet and it is too late for all of them by then.

To find out whether you have a male or a female guinea pig, there are many websites to check, and these have other links. I found a few that I like:
- How to tell the sex of your Cavy has good pictures.
- What Sex is my Guinea Pig / Cavy ?

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HOMES To get a good home/cage for your piggy, you can either buy a guinea pig cage starter kit that the pet stores sell. These are a good for a first time buyer, or for one single pig. You do not have to use that type of cage though. For 2 years, until we moved into a house with 2 cats that like to hunt,our 3 pigs lived comfortably in a baby wading pool! It gave them plenty of room and they could run around as much as they pleased! Now, they share a plastic trunk - with plenty of air holes drilled in. Again, it gives them a lot of room, and we even built a box that we set in there so they could either hide under it, or climb on top of it and have a second floor! Recently, I cut a hole into it just big enough to fit the connecting ferret tubes. I connected the 2 cages (the plastic trunk and the cage that my first piggy came in) by these tubes and they can now run back and forth between the 2 cages to their little hearts content! If you look close at the pictures, you can see our piggies in, and around the cages and tubes. My father made the climbing house for the small cage - 2 levels and a slide!! I made the one in the bin. The purple thing in with Kira in the last picture is a litter box - they actually do use them if you train them right!



• Cages with wire bottoms are not too good for piggies feet. They often get caught and break their feet. Also, the wires are not too comfortable - would you like to walk on wire all day and try to sleep on it at night?


• They like to have a lot of room.
  
• They love to have time outside eating grass, clover, dandilions, etc - be sure the grass has not been fertilized or sprayed with weed killer, or it could become a piggy killer!


• The store-bought cages are nice, but just putting them in a large plastic container (such as a plastic baby wading pool, or trunk with holes drilled in lid) are much less expensive, and just as good!
  
• If you have an outdoor pen, please make sure that they are sheilded from the weather. In the wild, they live in the mountains, but that does not mean the domesticated piggies like to be snowed on!



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BEDDING
• Bedding is a big issue!, Some types can hurt the pigies instead of helping them!


• Different types of bedding/litter etc can have certain oils in them that can cause respiratory problems in the pigs.
  
• My sister, a Vetrinarian, told me that red cedar bedding and pine bedding are NOT good for guinea pigs. Besides respiratory problems, and allergy prone, these beddings can also cause liver problems.


• The recycled newspaper beddings such as "Carefresh" seem to be the best bedding for the guinea pigs. ( I do NOT own stock in that company!!!)


• Another type of bedding I just recently found is "Feline Pine". It is a cat litter but is VERY good at elimination odors. It is more expensive than regular litters, but is WELL WORTH the money in order to save your nose!!!


• I have found that my piggies like to crawl through piles of shredded paper - now we find a great use for shredded confidential documents (hear that Mrs. Clinton?) No one would want them after a piggy is done with it!



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Illnesses
• Guinea pigs do get respiratory diseases fairly quickly. Even though their wild relatives were origionally from the South American mountain tops, domestic piggies don't do well in drafty areas. Although, they live in our basement which is cooler than the rest of the house - and love it!


• They DO NOT do well in the heat! Guinea pigs can die easily & quickly in the heat. Our piggy, Kira, got a nosebleed outside last summer - I thought it was cool enough for her but piggies don't do well in the heat! Also, in one of the schools I visited, I found out that one of their piggies died earlier this year when their heat went up too high in their classroom and the poor thing just died. :,-(
  

I will add on to this as I have more time & energy! Please e-mail me with questions if I have forgotten anything! the-3-millers@geocities.com

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