Peqaboo series
Guinea pigs are considered senior from around four to five years old. This overview explains the common changes of ageing, arthritis and weight loss, dental and eye problems, and how to adjust the cage, diet and monitoring routine to keep your older pig comfortable and catch illness early.
Guinea pigs handle most of their own coat care, but you still need to brush long-haired breeds, keep the rear end clean, and trim nails every few weeks. This calm, step-by-step guide shows you how to groom safely at home without hurting your pig.
Floor time lets guinea pigs stretch, run and forage beyond their cage. This guide covers how to set up a safe playpen, guinea-pig-proof the space, pick the right flooring, and supervise sessions so your pets get healthy exercise without escaping or getting hurt.
Guinea pig nails grow continuously and need regular trimming to prevent pain and deformity. This step-by-step guide shows how to hold your pet calmly, find the quick, trim safely, and handle a bleeding nail, so home nail care stays stress-free.
Guinea pigs are chatty and expressive once you learn their vocabulary. This guide decodes the main sounds, from wheeking to teeth-chattering, and the body language of popcorning, freezing and rumbling, so you can read your pigs' moods and spot when something is wrong.
Guinea pigs are herd animals that suffer when kept alone. This guide explains why companionship matters, which pairings work, how to introduce two guinea pigs step by step on neutral ground, and how to tell normal squabbling from serious fighting.
Bladder stones and gritty urinary sludge are common and painful in guinea pigs. Learn how to spot straining and blood in the urine, why diet and hydration matter, what a vet visit involves, and how to lower the risk of stones coming back.
Bumblefoot is a painful foot infection caused by pressure, dirty flooring, and obesity. Learn to catch the early redness, fix the bedding and diet that cause it, care for the feet at home, and know when your guinea pig needs a vet.
Ovarian cysts are extremely common in unspayed female guinea pigs, especially from middle age. This article explains the signs, most notably symmetrical hair loss and a swelling belly, how vets diagnose and treat them, and why spaying is the definitive solution for affected sows.
Pregnancy toxemia is a rapid, often fatal metabolic crisis in late-pregnant or newly delivered guinea pigs. This article explains why it happens, who is most at risk, the warning signs, and why prevention and immediate veterinary care are the only realistic ways to save an affected sow.
Guinea pigs cannot make their own vitamin C, so a poor diet quickly leads to scurvy. Learn the early signs, why it happens, how to supplement safely, and when a deficiency becomes a medical emergency that needs a vet who treats small exotic pets.
Before you bring a guinea pig home, a five-minute health check can save weeks of vet visits. Learn the head-to-tail signs of a healthy piggy, the red flags that mean walk away, and why choosing a same-sex pair from a clean source matters most.
Fresh vegetables provide vital vitamin C and variety, but the wrong choices cause bloating, diarrhoea or bladder stones. This checklist sorts everyday vegetables into safe daily foods, occasional treats and ones to avoid, with clear portion sizes and how to introduce new items safely.
Learn to read guinea pig vocalizations, tell behaviour sounds from medical noises, and know when to act, when to wait, and when to see a small-mammal vet the same day.
Discover why guinea pigs are obligate social animals, the science behind Switzerland's famous companion laws, and how to safely bond your solo cavy.
Guinea pigs are not crate trained, but carrier training is real and valuable. Leave the carrier open in the enclosure, feed meals inside it, and build up to closed doors and short journeys.
The first three days decide whether a new guinea pig settles or crashes. Hiding is normal, not eating is not, and the diet change that owners make on day one is a common cause of gut stasis. This guide covers the weight baseline, quarantine from resident pigs and why it matters, the sexing check that prevents an unplan
Long-haired guinea pigs mat within days because their hair never stops growing. Mats trap urine and droppings against thin skin, causing scald and, in warm weather, flystrike. Learn to tease mats out safely from the tip, when to stop and get a vet or groomer, and how a short trim prevents them coming back.
Free shaping fails in a prey species that responds to non-reinforcement by hiding, so guinea pig training uses luring, targeting and tiny approximations at a high rate of reward. Sets out an eight-stage plan for syringe acceptance, the side-of-mouth technique that avoids aspiration, a soft marker instead of a clicker,
Guinea pigs do not jump up at people. They freeze, scatter, or hide. Visitors meet them safely at floor level, with two-handed support and short sessions, because a dropped guinea pig can suffer a spinal or limb fracture.
Guinea pigs are fertile from around three to four weeks, months before they look mature, and adolescent rank behaviour peaks in the middle of the first year. This guide maps what changes and when, separates normal displays from real escalation, and covers the alfalfa to grass hay switch most owners miss.
Healthy guinea pigs do not need baths, and water brings risks that dirt does not: chilling, stress and a gut that stops moving. This guide covers when a bath is genuinely indicated, how to do it without harm, and how to work out which medical cause is behind a back end that keeps getting dirty.
Guinea pigs chew rather than scratch, and the chewing is necessary because every tooth grows for life. This guide explains why hay and not wooden toys is what keeps the cheek teeth right, decodes bar chewing by when it happens, covers the electrical cable injury that can kill hours after the event, and sets out a floor
Guinea pigs are runway users, not burrowers, so sustained digging usually means cover seeking, heat, social pressure, skin irritation or reproductive behaviour. How to tell those apart, why substrate causes more harm than the behaviour, and when digging is a medical sign.
The first year with guinea pigs is front loaded, and most avoidable disasters happen in the first three months. This guide walks through company, sex confirmation, housing and diet in month one, the parasites and respiratory illness that cluster in months two and three, adolescence and neutering decisions, and how the
Guinea pigs are ground-dwelling grazers, so height, wheels, balls and harnesses are wrong for them and several are dangerous. This guide covers the three behaviours enrichment has to serve, why every hide needs two exits, cheap items that genuinely work, safe floor time in a flat, and how to introduce novelty to a neop
Guinea pigs stand on thin, unpadded skin, so pressure, damp bedding and abrasion break it down long before an owner notices a limp. This guide covers what a healthy sole looks like, the stages from bald pink skin to bone involvement, the look-alikes including arthritis and vitamin C deficiency, the flooring that preven
Guinea pigs are obligate herd animals, and the loss of a cage mate is a medical event as much as an emotional one because the survivor's appetite is what fails first. This guide covers what bereavement looks like, what to check before a newcomer arrives, how to run a neutral-ground introduction, which behaviours to lea
The real danger when moving house with guinea pigs is stress putting them off their food and triggering gut stasis. Keep bonded companions together, transport them warm and secure in the cabin, rebuild their familiar setup first in a quiet room, and watch eating and droppings closely for days afterwards.
Guinea pigs have no play-biting behaviour, so every bite means something specific: tasting food scent, asking to be put down, fear, pain, or social tension. This guide covers the blind spot that explains most nibbling, the five causes and how to tell them apart, the medical differentials behind sudden biting including
Symmetrical flank hair loss with a pear-shaped body and new mounting behaviour usually means ovarian cysts, which are common in unspayed sows. This guide covers the hormonal mechanism, the itch question that separates cysts from burrowing mites, the differentials for a swollen abdomen, and an honest comparison of spayi
Guinea pigs cannot be lead trained and a harness can injure them. The real need behind the question is daily running space. Here is how to set up safe indoor floor time and a covered outdoor run, and the heat and predator risks to plan around.
Guinea pigs do not bark. They wheek, purr, rumble, chut and chatter their teeth, and each sound means something different depending on context and body posture.
Guinea pigs do not need to meet a baby; they need their routine, hiding places and hay to survive the disruption. This guide covers what to change during pregnancy rather than after the birth, why a guinea pig that stops eating is an emergency within hours, the ringworm and allergen issues that matter in a household wi
Boar bonds fail mostly from too little space, too few resources, hormones, or a female in scent range. How to tell normal dominance from a real fight, set up a bond that can work, and what to do when it cannot.
Guinea pigs are not routinely vaccinated in most regions, so post-vaccine reaction guides do not apply. Real prevention is daily vitamin C from food, unlimited hay, dental monitoring, parasite control and weekly weighing. This guide also covers what a normal recovery from a genuine procedure looks like.
Guinea pigs conceal illness, so adult care runs on a routine rather than on noticing. This guide gives a weekly weight method and a two-minute head-to-tail examination, and covers the adult problems it catches: dental disease behind hay refusal, bladder stones, ovarian cysts, pododermatitis, perineal sac impaction and
Guinea pigs shed continuously and have no dense undercoat, so deshedding blades and undercoat rakes have nothing to remove and cut skin instead. This compares the tools that suit each coat type, from smooth and Abyssinian to Peruvian, Texel and hairless breeds, explains how to tell a normal moult from hair loss that ne
A guinea pig groom is nails, a skin and coat check, the grease gland, the rear end and, in long-coated breeds, daily combing and a hygiene trim. It is not a bath. This guide covers restraint that does not frighten a prey animal, why a nail left long cannot be shortened in one go, how to clean a grease gland, why older
Guinea pigs cannot learn doorway manners. What they need is safe pick-up: side approach, two-handed support, low sessions over soft ground, and an enclosed pen for floor time.
Guinea pig noise and cage odour are real problems in shared housing, and almost every quick fix owners try is dangerous. This guide explains where the smell actually comes from, why ammonia pools exactly where the animals breathe and how it enables pneumonia, how to cut noise transmission through the structure, and whi
Rehoming a guinea pig is a medical event as much as an administrative one, because a move that changes home, companions and diet on the same day is how a healthy animal ends up in gut stasis. How to decide whether rehoming is even the right answer, what a genuinely adequate new home looks like, the health facts you mus
The danger in travelling with guinea pigs is that they stop eating, and a hindgut fermenter that stops eating slides into gut stasis within hours. This guide covers packing the same hay and pellets rather than buying at the destination, a carrier deep in hay and big enough for caecotrophy, water in motion, counting dro
Rumbling, mounting and chin-lifting are normal rank behaviour; blood is where it stops. This guide separates the two, explains why single-entrance hides and undivided resources cause most conflict, covers ovarian cysts and pain as causes of sudden aggression, and gives a realistic reintroduction protocol including when
