Don’t Buy A Guinea Pig Before You Buy His Guinea Pig Hutch
A wonderful hobby for children and for adults is keeping guinea pigs. And because of this guinea pigs are becoming an extremely popular pet. However if you’re now considering buying your first piggy you do need to first spend some time thinking about the guinea pig hutch you will house him in.
You can keep a guinea pig both indoors or outdoors, though if you keep him outdoors he can suffer from both excess cold and heat. You will keep him outdoors in a guinea pig hutch, though either indoors or outdoors you need to be aware of several things.
The majority of people buy a guinea pig hutch from their pet shop or off the Internet, which is fine unless you buy one of the very small cages available, which is most common because these are the cheapest. However most guinea pig cages are way too small and do not provide sufficient space for him to play or exercise in. You must make an effort to house your guinea pigs properly with sufficient space.
One way to overcome this problem is to build your own guinea pig hutch, and if you can scrounge simple second-hand materials you can do so very successfully and quite cheaply, and can make him a nice large cage.
But you should also understand that guinea pigs get bored easily and will still need entertainment even if they have a nice large hutch. The best way to provide entertainment for your guinea pig is to provide him with a companion, thoug you do need to research which sexes go together and which do not.
If you put 2 males together you can have fighting, and if you put a male with a female you’ll end up with lots of baby guinea pigs unless you desex one of them, or unless you separate them which defeats the whole purpose. The best combination is to buy 2 young females and house them together.
And you’ll also need to provide something for your piggies to chew on as their teeth grow continuously and they need to chew to help wear them down. A piece of wood is sufficient and if they don’t have this they will chew on their hutch. As well they need a constant supply of fresh hay and some playthings such as plastic pipes or boxes for them to play in.
So before you buy one or more guinea pigs understand the requirements for adequate housing, in particular buy or build a guinea pig hutch that is sufficiently spacious, provide them with playthings, and if you are buying more than one make sure you buy the correct sexes.