Fighting Bite Marks on the Ear

This has never happened to me, but I read in a book that show guinea pigs need an tag on their ears, which is kind of (kind of) like biting. Check for infection. I would bring them to an exotic vet.

@mcbean2006, please do not give medical advice until you've had much more experience with guinea pigs. Show tags have nothing to do with bite marks. There's absolutely no reason to take a guinea pig to a vet for a nibbled ear unless there are signs of infection -- heat, swelling, redness, pus, odor, pain. Save the vet money for a trip when you really need it.

@hsfb24, how large is your cage? Lack of room is a major reason for guinea pig aggression, including nibbled ears.

Also, how old are they now? And could they have been in heat?

bpatters said:

@mcbean2006, please do not give medical advice until you've had much more experience with guinea pigs. Show tags have nothing to do with bite marks. There's absolutely no reason to take a guinea pig to a vet for a nibbled ear unless there are signs of infection -- heat, swelling, redness, pus, odor, pain. Save the vet money for a trip when you really need it.

@hsfb24, how large is your cage? Lack of room is a major reason for guinea pig aggression, including nibbled ears.

Also, how old are they now? And could they have been in heat?

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@bpatters, thank you for your response. We have a 2 x 4 CC cage. We had a loft but they NEVER used it so we took it down. Maybe we took it down too soon? It's much easier to clean the cage without it so if you think we need a bigger cage, we will have to make it a 2x5. Before we adopted the pigs, I read your links you sent me and I'm pretty sure that a 2x4 was big enough but i will go back and check.

They are a year and a half old. I'm not sure if they're in heat. I believe that only lasts a couple of days? They've been squealing and probably biting longer than that.

That cage should be big enough. Bigger is always better if you've got the grids, but a 2x4 should work OK.

At a year and half, if they were going to have aggression problems while they were in heat, you'd have already noticed it. And they're young for ovarian cysts to be considered as a problem. However, if you notice that only one of them is the particular aggressor, it might be worth asking for an ultrasound to check on cysts. But it's extremely unlikely that both of them would have cysts if both are doing the biting.

Other than than, I'm not sure what the problem could be. You might try a buddy bath. I've never heard of one being used for that situation, but maybe the shared terror will make them appreciate each other a little more.

bpatters said:

Other than than, I'm not sure what the problem could be. You might try a buddy bath. I've never heard of one being used for that situation, but maybe the shared terror will make them appreciate each other a little more.

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HAHA! Sorry that reminds me of the post on here, fear is a great motivator... or something like that where two pigs wouldn't touch the grass.

Sorry. :sorry: