Pleased to meet you all

[shypaw]

Hello,

I wanted to say hi and introduce my girls Peaches, Fifi, Hershey and Carlita. We've had them for about 10 days now. My roomate and I both bought two guinea's each, so we have four total. We've lived together for 6 years, so I don't see the herd splitting up any time soon. His girls are Carlita and Hershey, but all four live together in one herd, with Carlita as the leader.

We did buy them from a Pet Store before we knew better, but now that they are home I couldn't think of bringing them back there. They were crammed into two small tanks with 4 more female piggies. We made a really nice 6x2 cube home for them that has an awesome second story with a ramp. They have multiple houses that are fully edible, lot's of tubes, two water bottles and two hay bins and the softest, bird snuggly tunnel thing that they all love. These girls are loving the space they now have!

The only problem we've had so far is with Carlita. When we take them out of the cage at night for one on one time, Carlita tends to chew and nip at our clothing, fingers and sometimes arms. It's strange, she could be just sitting on out lap and we are not even touching her and she'll nudge over to our arm and nip it. None of the other girls do that, so I'm hopeing she grows out of it. She is the largest and most dominant female too. Is this normal? How can we deter her from this? We don't yell at her or anything, we just act like she did nothing wrong so she does not get scared of us.

Thank you!
-E.J. (Shypaw)

[Ly&Pigs]

Hi and Welcome to GPC.

They have multiple houses that are fully edible

Are these those snak shack things? If so please remove them and get them some other type of hiding house or pigloos because these houses are made from honey and alfalfa and honey is not good for pigs at all.

What kind of tubes do you have for them to play with?

Your cage sounds very nice and it's very roomy for your girls as well.

[shypaw]

Hi and thank you for the welcome.

One house is a snackshak, and two are greenish/yellow pigloos. The tubes (3 of them) are made of colored cardboard that they can chew. We bought them at Petco. I knew not to give them seed sticks due to choking hazards, but didn't know that the Snakshck was bad for them too. Honey in general is not good for them?

Thank you.
-E.J.

[rabbitsncavyluv]

Did you flip them over and double check that they are all females?

It wouldn't hurt to treat them all for mites if they came from a pet store.

Here are tips on biting http://www.cavyspirit.com/biting.htm

No honey. The chubes and pigloos are good though.

[shypaw]

Thank you very much for the link. I looked on the web for something on biting, but couldn't find anything as detailed as this. I'm so happy to know that this may not be a personality issue for Carlita afterall, and that we may be able to get her to slow it down.

I'm looking into taking all four girls to the vet now, so they can be looked over for mites, but I don't see anything as far as hair loss on any of them. They really do seem to be adjusting pretty well so far, and I'm so pleased that they get along with each other wonderfully.

I did try to verify the sex of each piggie, but honestly I had a hard time with it. They do all look the same down there, so hoipefully they are all girls. I'll have the vet verify that too.