any guinea pig money saving tips?

Evie82

Like others have mentioned, i top up with Straw and Hay in the morning and night.

My guinea pigs tend to only eat the Hay and not be so fussed about the straw, so fussed about the straw, so they do tend to have bedding at all times.

In the really cold nights, i pop into the sleep compartment a little old hand towel, on top of the hay as an extra layer. Maybe im too soft. :rotfl:

LizD_2

I keep my four girls indoors during the winter, although they came in early last year due to the horrible weather we had in September (I'm just too soft!). On cold nights outdoors I give them an old towel as well, which they love - it doubles as a toy to drag around and snuggle under. They don't seem to chew it if I give them enough hay and nuggets to eat.

ethansmum

I'm thinking about getting a couple of guineas for the kids. I have an outdoor hutch, but wondered about the weekly costs involved. I use going to buy some profleece for the bedding and pellets for the food. I have heard that most people only feed their guineas fresh veggies everyday- what do you do?

Thanks

Drea

I used to have three guinea pigs. I fed them dry guinea pig food in the morning (dead cheap) and at night I fed them fresh veg, lettuce, celery, cucumber, carrott, they eat anything! Anything on sale at the supermarket or even at the 'going out of date' bit would do them fine be prepared for some loud squeaking when you open the fridge though!

Only other cost is hay and whatever bedding you use. I just put clean hay in whenever I put clean straw in, again pretty cheap.

sodamnfunky

We have four guinea pigs, and we buy a 15kg bag of gerty guinea pig for £15.35 and it lasts us about 4 months. We also feed them veggie scraps when we are having veggies for dinner, and the odd carrot and apple.

I buy a bale of hay once every 6 weeks for about £2

happytails

I have 2 guinea pigs. We give them dry food which is about £2 for a 2kg bag and lasts about 2weeks and loads of fruit and veg - please check which veg you CANT feed pigs like too much lettuce can lead to colic etc.

Grass - get them out in good weather (we have a run for them) and saves on veg if they've pigged out on the lawn all day!

Sawdust - i will buy a 5kg bag from wilkinsons for £2.69 will usually last a month and same with the hay.

Vet bills arent so expensive for piggies either which is a plus

just make sure you dont get a male and female together by accident - my cousin ended up with babies from two 'girls' :rotfl:

Sarah

littleemmie

We have 2 guinea pigs and they are brilliant pets! We use vetbed for them to sleep on, hay on top of that and shredded paper for them to snuggle in. We get a bag of hay from the supermarket for around £2 and it lasts about 2 weeks. We always give them hay to eat in their hay manger which they love and keep their dried food topped up (which we also get from the supermarket for about £4 which lasts about a month).

We give them veg in the morning and evening which is usually two slices of cucumber, 4 green beans, slices of carrot and celery, one babycorn chopped up and some curly kale. They also get treats of parsley, romaine lettuce (don't give them any other type of lettuce) and let them run round in the grass if its warm enough! They are very spoilt piggies and squeak at the top of their voices whenever the fridge door is opened!

One thing the vet told us is that guinea pigs can get mites very easily from their hay so to stop this, freeze the hay for 24hours and let it defrost before giving it to the pigs. It has definately seemed to work for us.

ethansmum

Awwww we did the deed!!! Who knew it was so difficult to find guinea pigs? 5 pet shops latter we found a pair of brothers that are soo sweet!!

So I got the hutch (indoors) and the timothy hay and pellets. I was wondering about the vet bed though. I'm quite happy to buy it but DH doesn't like the idea of guinea pig wee in the washing machine. Does it stink it out? Or do you rinse the vet bed out firsts?

Anyone have anymore tips please?

littleemmie

We bought vetbed to cut down on the cost of woodshavings which we were getting through like there is no tomorrow!! We bought one big vetbed from Ebay and cut it in half so there can always be a clean one ready for the pigs.

Before we put the vetbed in the washing machine we try to hoover as much hay out as possible so that it doesn't clog the machine. I'm still a bit concerned as there are always bits of hay left in the machine at the end which I have to hoover up - then again we had a blockage in the machine a few weeks ago which wasn't caused by hay and there was no sign of any, so who knows!? We have had no problem with it stinking the washing machine out and it always goes in on its own on a short cycle.

Vetbed is much less smelly than woodshavings and less messy. Guinea Pigs like to run around in their hutch and we were forever coming down in the morning to find the floor covered in woodshavings!!

The only other thing I can think of but that you've probably covered already is their food bowls. Guinea Pigs tend to lean on the bowls while eating (or in our case sit in it to stop the other one getting the tastiest bits!!) and so food ends up everywhere!! Make sure you have a deep heavy bowl that won't tip over or a plastic one which has a lip on the bottom (hard to explain but they are cheap in pets at home).

Good luck with them and hope you have fun!!!

tru

ethansmum wrote: »

we found a pair of brothers that are soo sweet!!

Are you sure? We bought two brothers at Easter and they are now proud parents of three :rotfl:

We have seven piggies. We feed them mostly veg and hay, and some pellets.

The sawdust comes from the sawmill (50p ber binliner) and the hay comes from a farm (£2 per bale).

And don't worry about mites from hay - the vet says that's a myth