Care Profile: Guinea Pigs

Boy oh boy, did I ever have a disaster the other morning. I was unclogging the filter on one of my fish tanks, and instead of cleaning it out after, I stupidly just put it right back in the tank and turned it on. Seconds later, the water in my tank was a murky brown. Use spring water to change my tanks and I don’t have any right now since it’s during the week, and of course with no car, I can’t very well get any. So I started freaking out since the usually prescribed method to deal with murky water is a massive water change. To top that all off, after being cleaned the filter stopped working. Luckily, I had a brand new 30g filter in my closet that my boyfriend bought me. That thing is powerful and it cleared the murk right up. Crisis avoided.



On to the topic at hand: Guinea Pigs

Often overlooked, Guinea Pigs are very neat little animals. That’s why I’m writing up a Care Profile of them for you! First a little bit about their origins. Their scientific name is Cavia Porcellus, thus many people often call them Cavies as well. Originally they come from South America, and today they are still considered a food item there and other parts of the world. Here in the good ole US of A, most of us consider them pets.

Diet: Adult Guinea Pigs, like all pets (and us humans too!) Need a varied diet to stay healthy and live to their full potential. They should have a daily staple of Guinea Pig pellets, which from what I understand, are a formulation of hay and other natural ingredients that have many of the vitamins and good stuff they require in their diet. You should also give them a nice pile of Timothy hay to graze on at their leisure. You can supplement their diet with leafy greens and give them fruit or vegetables sparingly. Always make sure they have access to fresh water, the most reliable delivery method being a standard gravity water bottle.

Companionship: Purchasing a lone Guinea Pig is ill advised. They are very social creatures and should have at least one same sex partner. Try to avoid mixing sexes unless you have them neutered. We all know that babies mean more babies and so on. If you get your pigs from different sources, quarantine them in different rooms for a few weeks to make sure nobody gets anybody sick. Having a friend will not stop your pigs from loving you as long as you handle them both everyday and make an effort on your part. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither are friendships.

Housing: Do not use those so called “Guinea Pig” cages from the pet store. They are much to small for a single Guinea Pig, let alone two. Most Guinea Pig owners use “Cube and Coroplast” (or C&C) cages. Coroplast is a sign makers plastic, and you can get it a sign stores. Cubes are coated wire cubes that are intended for storage. You can buy them most anywhere you find household storage items. I’ll include a link to a full website dedicated to these cages at the end of this post. Whatever you choose to use for your cage, it should be at least 7 or 8 square feet per pair or single pig. Bigger is always better.

Bedding: Guinea Pigs are sensitive to dust (as with most small pets) and it can cause serious respiratory problems, so only use a bedding that is free of dust. Carefresh and Aspen shavings are often reccomended. Another method I recently learned about is much cheaper and cleaner. It involves lining the cage with a few towels (to absorb urine) and place a layer of fleece on top of that. You just do a daily spot cleaning to get rid of the poop and toss the bedding into the washing machine once a week to get rid of the urine. The best part is that the bedding is reusable and a one time cost.

Breeds: There are quite a few Guinea Pig breeds recognized by the American Cavy Breeders Association (ACBA). American is the most common breed and if you see you GP in the pet store, that’s probably what it is. Many of the other breeds have a continually growing long coat. If you want to keep their fur long, you’ll have to brush it daily and bathe them every so often. If you don’t want to deal with this, then carefully trim their fur to the desired length. Have someone experienced do it if you’re not sure how.



Links: Most of the information presented I learned from google searches and my friend Azusanga who has guinea pigs herself (In fact, all the beautiful pigs you see in this post belong to her!). Here are some of the sites I used that have much more information about Gps than this summary of care:

http://www.guinealynx.info/index.html (General Care Information)
http://www.cavyspirit.com/ (General Care Information)
http://www.guineapigcages.com (Lots of information about building C&C Cages!)
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=18+1800&aid=2838 (Information about Guinea Pig Breeds)

More Pictures:

[Thanks Azu for letting me use pictures of your girls!]

Well, I hope you enjoyed the first ever Vanilla Bean Care Profile! It’s been fun writing and researching this entry, but boy am I glad it’s done. I hope anyone looking to buy/adopt a guinea pig has gleaned useful information from it. Until next time, Wheek Wheek!

First Post!

Hello everyone and welcome to The Vanilla Bean, so named because one of my nicknames is Vanilla, and the Vanilla Bean sounds like a cool hang out, which I hope is what this blog will become!

First, a little bit about myself. My name is Tiffany, but you can feel free to call me either Tiffy or Vanilla. I am currently 19 years old and I work in the concession business part time. Animals are my passion and I hope to someday have a career that is animal related. Graduated from high school in 2007 and I am trying to get accepted to a local community college in the Animal Care Specialist Course. I'm also hoping to find a part time job having to do with animals within the next year or so.
I love Anime and attend my local convention every year. I haven't missed it since I started going in 2005. I like to cosplay all though I am not the best seamstress, my costumes are at least accurate and passable. I play video games and my amazing boyfriend bought me an XBox 360, along with a game (Left 4 Dead), and a $120 GameStop gift card for Christmas. Yeah, he's a keeper (<3 Love you Honey.)
I like to cook, although very rarely get to cook anything from scratch because of limited funds, equipment, and time. When I do though, my entire household is treated to exotic fares they might never have tried elsewise.
I believe in peace and that everyone should be treated with a certain amount of respect unless they do not deserve it. Racism is stupid and so is any sort of prejudice. I may joke about hating those damn antarticans, but that doesn't mean I really hate them, so keep that in mind.
Born and raised in New England, I am a Sox fan and sometimes talk with a Boston accent. I also hate snow, cold, and rotaries. But I really wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
I have 4 cats, 3 fish tanks, and I just recently purchased a Russian Tortoise.

Now for a bit of an introduction to the blog. I hope to turn The Vanilla Bean into a place people can come to for entertainment and information. I'll be posting articles, rants, pictures, links, recipes and more. Many of my posts will probably be about animals, and things that I learn from day to day. My posts might have a political bias (liberal, duh) so please do not be offended. I am not trying to cause any trouble here, just adding to the wonderful resource that the internet is.

Okay, so. Since November, I've been wanting a Russian Tortoise. As soon as christmas was over, I started saving up. I was going to buy one from my local PetSmart, but he got sold before I could get my funds up. I then decided to go the smart route and get one from a breeder. I don't want to help support poachers who get these guys from the wild, and I would much rather have a baby tortoise that I can raise and "train" to be a loving little pet. So, I saved up even more money and thanks to the people on the forum at http://www.russiantortoise.org, I was refered to a pet store in California that had some captive raised baby Russians (http://petacularexotics.com I HIGHLY recommend them. From what I gather it is run by a husband/wife team and with them, the animals come first. If you need a reptile, check them out!) and was an experienced shipper. After a few e-mails back and forth with the owner, I paid for my tortoise and the wait began. Being winter, it's just been way too cold on my end to risk shipping. Luckily this week there was a break in the weather and it was 55 for two days straight. They shipped him (or her) out yesterday and I got him this morning.
Of course after all these months of waiting, it wasn't that easy. I woke up early enough yesterday morning to make sure I did not miss the Fedex guy. The pet store told me that my tortoise would be delivered next day by 10:30 AM. So when 12 rolled around and there was still no knock, I started getting frantic. I have no patience and I had to wait a few months as it was.
I decided to check my doors and lo and behold, on my front door there was a 'sorry we missed you' tag from fedex, telling me they would try delivering it again tomorrow, or that I could pick up my package at their location a few towns over after six. On the phone with my boyfriend, I started freaking out and my hero, he said he would start getting ready and drive over to my house (a 30 min drive) so he could take me to Fedex and we could demand some sort of them giving me my tortoise now action. But I decided to call them first and tell them the situation. Once the lady realized that it was a time sensitive, weather sensitive live shipment, she got right on calling the driver and sending him back to my house asap.
So finally, after months of waiting, I got my tortoise. And I sure am happy I did everything the way I did. For a mere 3 months of waiting and $225, I got myself a beautiful, healthy, baby Russian Tortoise. It was love at first blink. When I opened the box, tore off the top layer of styrofoam, threw the heat pack, and frantically pushed away all of the packing paper, I saw my little tortoise for the first time. It opened it's little eyes and gave me a look that said "Hey! I was sleeping! What gives?"

That look made everything worth it.