i may be geting a guinea pig soon....?

Question

i may be geting a guinea pig soon and i need to know every thing there is to know can i only have 1 or do i need to have more ?

Answer 1

They are not like hamsters where you need more then one. If you just got one it would be fine.I have only one and they love attention! If you have any kids you might want to get a female they are not aggressive like the males are. One thing that i have found out about them is that they like to make a mess ( kick their bedding out of the cage ) what I usually do is put a towel over the cage don't cover the whole cage just 3 sides of it so that if they do kick the bedding around they will not kick it all over it will stay in the cage. Some piggies like to make a lot of noise mine is quite up until she gets hungry and hears me crinkle the bag of lettuce then she gets little noisy. Good luck.
If you want to know more I will be happy to help if I can.

Answer 2

Guinea pigs must be kept in same-sex pairs whenever possible. They are extremely social creatures and need attention from their own kind as well as attention from you.

Some good websites for you to use are www.guinealynx.com and www.cavyspirit.com. You can also join a guinea pig digest where you can ask other avid guinea pig lovers questions along the way. You can do that on guinealynx or at www.gpdd.org.

First thing to know... Get as big of a cage as you can afford or make your own. www.cavycages.com will show you how to make one for fairly inexpensive. Never, ever use an aquarium, aquariums are for fish. Also do not use cedar shavings. There is an oil in cedar that reacts with their urine and causes toxic fumes. Use pine shavings or aspen or the paper kind.

When you buy pellets and hay, yes they need timothy hay every day, it has to be GREEN. Some stores like meijer will try and get away with selling you crap and it is brown and gross. Also do not buy any mix that has sunflower seeds in it. They will choke on the hulls. Pigs are not birds, they can't crack open seeds. Corn is ok, but seeds are bad.

They also need fresh fruits and veggies every day because they cannot make their own vitamin c. No iceberg lettuce, no mushrooms, no onions, no potatoes. Spinach, romaine lettuce, parsley, green peppers, apples, carrots, things like that. Don't bother with putting vitamin c drops in their water. It degrades in the light so fast it becomes worthless within hours and then makes the water a breeding ground for bacteria. Don't waste your money.

Do not go to the petstore to get your pigs if you can help it. There are a lot of homeless pigs online in rescues. They have been handled and loved and their personalities are known. www.petfinder.com and do a search for guinea pigs in your area. You could be saving a life.

The problem with pet store pigs is that they are very often sick, have parasites, and a lot of the females are pregnant. The pet stores give you incorrect information and it starts a cascade of events which leads to more homeless pigs in rescues such as my own.

I wish you the best of luck!

Lisa and the Wheeks and Squeaks Guinea Pig Rescue

Answer 3

I Don't Know...I work at Petco In Natick and we get our Guinea Pigs from Fishmart. I'm the Animal Care Specialist there and all the Guinea Pigs that come in I check to make sure they are healthy and happy, Which they are 99.9% of the time are. Usually the rule of thumb is that you can have two neutered, and I stress Neutering your Guinea pig, (goes along the lines of a neutered dog is a healther dog) male guinea pigs in the same cage. Guinea pigs will usually bond with you no matter how many you have. They do go to the bathroom on a regular basis, there not arid or desert mammals, more inland. But if you use Carefresh that should help and if you keep on it and change the cage at least once a week (I have one and I do it every friday) you should be fine. They are a campanion type of animal so if you work alot and can only spend like 1 hour day then I may suggest getting two. A Guinea pig is happy in his cage for the daytime duration (say you got to work at seven and get home at eight, that time period he/she is content on he/she own time) but you ultimately would want to socialize with the animal so it can get human friendly :)

Goodluck and while I disagree with the women who said getting a guinea pig from a pet store is bad, I wouldn't disagree adopting is bad.

OH! P.S: NEVER EVER GET YOUR PIG A WHEEL OR BALL OF ANY TYPE! THEY CAN BREAK THERE BACKS!!

Answer 4

you need another one unless your playing with it alot and i mean alot so be carefull i had two of them and i had them for a year be really carefull and watch them their really prone to upper respotory infections and can die thats what happened to mine and it's also contagis so if one gets it take the other one out right awawy i know all this because my grandmother owns 50

Answer 5

get 2 so your piggie will have a friend. Here's some websites that you will find helpful in educating yourself before getting him or her.
www.cavyspirit.com
www.cavies.com
www.cavymadness.com
www.oginet.com/pgurney/ (Peter Gurney's site-great stuff)
www.cavycages.com (really neat cages)
www.caviesgalore.com

Answer 6

unless you plan on paying constant attention to ur piggy, get another one. You dont want you r pig to be lonely do you?

Answer 7

i would 2 of them. they are very social and vocal too.. My piggies would stay up all night squecking at each other.. good luck getting use to it.. they do kind of stink too

Answer 8

get 2 and they don't stink unless thier cage hasn't been change for a while. people :|

Answer 9

get 2, and go to petsmart

Answer 10

They stink!!! plan on changing their litter every other day!!!