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This page is a brief resume of how we care for our Guineas, so far, touch wood, it has worked well for us and I hope it may be useful to anyone new to owning a guinea pig.
Feeding...
Our Guineas receive at least 4 different types of fresh vegetable and fruit everyday, we prepare this at 8am and the guinea chorus starts the minute we step outside the french doors!
I have added a picture of a typical days bowl of veggies with the cabbage on a separate tray, on this particular day they had cabbage, carrots, sweet potato and cucumber. The other regulars that are included in our veggie bowl are celery, uncooked beetroot (only occasionally because can cause a sore mouth), peppers, apple (again only occasionally because can cause a sore mouth, when I say occasionally, these are probably offered once per week), spinach leaves, parsley, tomato, melon, uncooked corn on the cob, broccoli and cauliflower leaves.
This is a large bowl, approx. 12ins diameter, and in addition to this we have the bowl full of cabbage,this amount is what we feed daily to approx. 25 guineas.
At 6pm our guineas dry food bowls are filled, we use a mixture of Spillers museli (we buy a 20kg sack for £8.75p) and we mix this in a feed bin with Pets at Home own brand Guinea Pig Museli (15kg sack costs £10.75p) this mixture seems to suit our guineas and we get very little waste where they have been selectively feeding. There has been a lot of written articles recently about feeding guinea pig pellets so as to stop your pigs selectively feeding... this seems to work well if they are started on it from babies, but it has been our experience that once they have got used to the variety offered in normal mixes they are reluctant to just have the pellets (and I must admit they do look very boring!)
At the time when our guineas bowls are filled we also offer a handful of Readigrass, this is available from Equestrian Centres and horse feed suppliers.
Obviously fresh water should always be available, we offer ours through the usual type of drinking bottle and this is changed daily, twice daily in hot weather.
Caring for our Cages...
Our guineas are all housed in wooden hutches, the first one is a stack of four and this was a commercially purchased hutch, all our others have been built by my Husband Dave and my Son, Shaun. There is something very special about having a homemade hutch...
Our hutches are made up in the following way... we put several layers of newspaper on the bottom, then we add a layer of Belgian bedding, this is a shaving that is particularly soft and kind to their little feet (this is approximately £6 for a huge bale that lasts approx. 2.5 clean outs) Bedmax (which is a wood shavings especially prepared for horse bedding and it has been dust extracted) we then put a thin layer of Bedmax over the area where their food is placed, this is much coarser and prevents the bedding sticking to their food, Bedmax costs us £5.25p for a very large, vaccum packed, bale which lasts us approx. 5 weeks. We then put good quality hay at one end of the hutch. We buy our hay from our local Horse Feed Suppliers and it costs £3.25 for a large bale which lasts us approx. 3 weeks but a shorter time in the Winter when we are adding more hay to the hutch.
We clean our cages every fifth day, we find this totally eliminates any smell and in the hot weather prevents the attraction of flies.
When we clean our cages we spray them with an antibacterial spray, paying special attention to the corners which they choose for their toileting area. We also give a very light spray of a Fly Repellent, this is designed especially for spraying onto horses and is therefore safe for animal use, we only use the repellent on a regular basis when the weather is hot, otherwise we just use it as and when required.
