Hello, My names Loki and I'm fourteen. I recently got two guinea pigs, one 8 month old named Cremme who I re-homed from someone on craigslist who had a miss-sex incident and then didn't have the time to look after the two litters anymore. The other one is 4 months old and named Becquerel who I got from a pet store. (Before I found this site, sadly, and read all the reasons why not to. I already hated pet stores, so I preferred not to go to one, beforehand. But now I feel even worse about going to one.) I tried contacting people about re-homing and rescuing, but no one replied to me, and after seeing how depressed Cremme was acting I got so worried that I was having panic attacks and staying up all night worried, so my mom just forced me to go to a pet store to get a piggie so I'd calm down, even after I explained to her why I didn't want to buy from a pet store. I honestly hate all pet stores for the way that most of the animals are treated there, but at least now Cremme will leave his hide and wheek happily.
I don't know very much about guinea pigs, but I've been reading like crazy for the past few days since I got them. I've had my mom drive to get me the biggest cage I could find in my price range (4 feet by 2.5 feet), I've started to switch to fleece (at least with Becquerel because he's a little pooping machine and he isn't neat about it like Cremme, so my regular paper bedding would cost a fortune!), I stopped feeding them their pellets and treats because I realized that they had a lot of nasty, no good ingredients. Now I just feed them plenty of vegetables (luckily my mom is a health nut and visits the natural grocer several times a month, so there's always plenty!) and hay with some vitamin c supplements, which makes them both very happy!
So at the moment I'm keeping Cremme in the large cage, and for the next few days I'm having to keep Becky-Boo (Becquerel) in a small 2.5x1.5 cage. I'm going to try and introduce them as soon as I can so that they get used to each other while Bec is still just a baby, and so he doesn't have to stay in the small cage anymore and I can finally get rid of the dumb old thing! (The small cage came with Cremme, and definitely did not fit a full grown guinea pig. Even before I started researching like crazy I could see that. It's just really sad, but at least now he has plenty of room to run and be happy )
I've decided to sell some of my old things to set aside money just in case of a vet visit (my parents will most likely chip in, but I want to have several hundred just in case), and if anyone knows of an exotic vet in the Austin, Texas area I would really love to know who to contact just in case anything happens!
I don't know very much about guinea pigs, but I've been reading like crazy for the past few days since I got them. I've had my mom drive to get me the biggest cage I could find in my price range (4 feet by 2.5 feet), I've started to switch to fleece (at least with Becquerel because he's a little pooping machine and he isn't neat about it like Cremme, so my regular paper bedding would cost a fortune!), I stopped feeding them their pellets and treats because I realized that they had a lot of nasty, no good ingredients. Now I just feed them plenty of vegetables (luckily my mom is a health nut and visits the natural grocer several times a month, so there's always plenty!) and hay with some vitamin c supplements, which makes them both very happy!
So at the moment I'm keeping Cremme in the large cage, and for the next few days I'm having to keep Becky-Boo (Becquerel) in a small 2.5x1.5 cage. I'm going to try and introduce them as soon as I can so that they get used to each other while Bec is still just a baby, and so he doesn't have to stay in the small cage anymore and I can finally get rid of the dumb old thing! (The small cage came with Cremme, and definitely did not fit a full grown guinea pig. Even before I started researching like crazy I could see that. It's just really sad, but at least now he has plenty of room to run and be happy )
I've decided to sell some of my old things to set aside money just in case of a vet visit (my parents will most likely chip in, but I want to have several hundred just in case), and if anyone knows of an exotic vet in the Austin, Texas area I would really love to know who to contact just in case anything happens!