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    Guinea Pigs: Complete Care Made Easy-Practical Advice To Caring For your Guinea Pig
    Guinea Pigs: Complete Care Made Easy-Practical Advice To Caring For your Guinea Pig
    Guinea Pigs: Complete Care Made Easy-Practical Advice To Caring For your Guinea Pig
    Ebook152 pages1 hour

    Guinea Pigs: Complete Care Made Easy-Practical Advice To Caring For your Guinea Pig

    By Virginia Parker Guidry and Carolyn McKeone

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    About this ebook

    Compact, easy-to-care-for, and a bundle of fun” is how author Virginia Parker Guidry describes the irresistible guinea pig. Ideal pets for families with children, cavies (as they’re often called) are clean, odorless, gentle, loving, and entertaining. This Complete Care Made Easy Guinea Pigs encapsulates all the virtues of these perfect small mammals and gives new owners practical advice about how to care for them. In chapter one, A Guinea What?” the author talks about the guinea pig’s natural historythey’re neither pigs nor from Guinea, but rather a rodent from Peruand how scientists classify this very unique mammal. To decide whether the guinea pig is right for you, chapter two discusses who makes the ideal owner and presents thirteen popular breeds of longhaired and shorthaired guinea pigs and the colors available to pet owners today.

    The chapter Finding a Healthy Guinea Pig” offers solid advice about selecting the right guinea pig, where to purchase or adopt, and the preferred sex. A complete chapter on preparing for the guinea pig offers the reader excellent advice about acclimating the new pet to the home, selecting the best cage and hutch, and pig-proofing the home. The subject of understanding guinea pig behavior is discussed in the chapter Living with a Guinea Pig,” which also covers daily-care topics such as feeding, grooming, handling, exercise, and litter box training. Keeping the guinea pig healthy is discussed in Staying Healthy,” a chapter that covers preventing illness, choosing a veterinarian, and common ailments. The final chapter Just for the Fun of It!” explores games, toys, activities, and showing guinea pigs. The appendix includes lists of pig-specific clubs, organizations, and websites. Glossary of terms and index included.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCompanionHouse Books
    Release dateOct 11, 2011
    ISBN9781937049072
    Guinea Pigs: Complete Care Made Easy-Practical Advice To Caring For your Guinea Pig

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    • 5/5
      I recommend it for people with Guinea Pigs, it helped me to take good of my Guineas and did you know that Guinea Pigs live up 7 to 10 years.

    Book preview

    Guinea Pigs - Virginia Parker Guidry

    During the 1800s, guinea pigs became favorite pets of the ladies of the court.

    WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF GUINEA PIGS! YOU CAN’T go wrong with a pet guinea pig. In fact, guinea pig enthusiasts swear the only way to live right is to share life with a guinea pig (or two or three …). Also known as cavies, these small, hairy critters who weigh a diminutive 2 to 3 pounds and measure 10 inches in length are fabulous pets. They’re compact, easy to care for, and a bundle of fun. Guinea pigs are ideal pets because they’re clean and odorless. In addition, they’re gentle and loving companions with entertaining personalities no one can resist.

    Cavies are great pets for anybody, adult or child, man or woman, boy or girl. Guinea pigs make excellent pets for families with children and are a favorite 4-H project animal. They are best kept indoors, but can be kept outdoors, can live in the city or country, and cost little to feed and care for. Perhaps best of all, with 13 breeds and a rainbow of coat colors and patterns to choose from, there’s a guinea pig to suit everyone’s fancy.

    Guinea pigs are considered fairly intelligent and frequently interact with their owners. They welcome loved ones with squeaks and whistles, especially at feeding time. Once accustomed to it, they enjoy being held and petted. They aren’t known for being escape artists and will usually remain safely tucked away in their cages. Biting isn’t usually a problem either, though it’s always a good idea to keep fingers away from their mouths.

    Feeding a guinea pig is simple; there’s no mixing or fussing. A diet of quality alfalfa pellets for young, growing, and pregnant guinea pigs and timothy-based pellets for fully developed guinea pigs along with fresh veggies is sufficient to keep these little creatures healthy. Fresh water is essential, too. Guinea pigs live about five to seven years and usually remain quite healthy. Though hardy animals, they can be susceptible to some illnesses, so good care is imperative. Grooming is minimal and includes regular toenail trimming, some brushing, and attention to teeth.

    Some guinea pigs are used as therapy animals and visit hospitalized children.

    Guinea pigs are fun to watch, whether they’re eating, sleeping, grooming, or playing. They enjoy interacting with their own kind, so owners often hear their pigs talking to one another in squeals, coos, gurgles, or teeth clacking.

    If all these positive points aren’t enough, guinea pigs are just plain cute. Their little faces are friendly and somewhat comical, and their stocky, round, and tailless bodies are extremely huggable.

    Now how’s that for a glowing introduction?

    Wild Beginnings and History

    Great modern day pets they are, but how did guinea pigs—which are neither pigs nor from Guinea in Africa—come to be such wonderful and popular pets? Well, it certainly didn’t happen overnight. As with many domestic companion animals, the process is a long one. For the domestic guinea pig, the story begins in ancient Peru.

    Exact dates are impossible to know, but archaeologists contend that domestication of the guinea pig may have begun around 5000 B.C. in southern Peru and Bolivia. To the ancient peoples in these regions, cavies were important food sources and were also used in religious, ceremonial, and healing rituals. In some areas of South America today, people still use the wild guinea pig, called cuy, for food and as part of healing and religious ceremonies.

    With the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, it is believed, cavies were brought from Peru to Europe during the 1500 or 1600s. Soon thereafter, guinea pigs became household pets. Queen Elizabeth I owned a guinea pig, as well as many European aristocrats. During the 1800s, guinea pigs became favorite pets of the ladies of the court and were carried about on silken pillows by servants. Guinea pigs were bred for specific traits, leading to the modern day plethora of breeds, colors, and coat patterns.

    A guinea pig is flanked by two other popular pets: a chinchilla and a rabbit.

    The domestic guinea pig eventually made its way to the U.S., where it became an instant hit among animal lovers. By the early 1900s, breeders were busy crossing and mating their guinea pig stock for the purpose of showing. The National Pet Stock Association was formed in 1910 to oversee the breeding of small mammals, including guinea pigs, rabbits, and hamsters. The organization narrowed its focus to rabbits and cavies in 1923 and changed its name to the American Rabbit and Cavy Breeders Association. In 1952 guinea pig fanciers decided to form a separate organization called the American Cavy Breeders Association. In response, the American Rabbit and Cavy Breeders Association changed its name, and intent, to the American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA). Later, the two separate clubs reunited, and today, the ARBA is the governing organization for both guinea pig and rabbit fanciers in the U.S.

    The Name Game

    THIS MUCH IS TRUE: DOMESTIC GUINEA PIGS ARE NOT pigs, nor are they from Guinea. Then how and why did these critters get tagged with the name guinea pig? Nobody knows for sure, but there are several ideas. Guinea could be a corruption of Guiana, which is in South America. Or, it might refer to Guinea in West Africa, where the creature could have passed through on its travels from one continent to another. And it might refer to a gold coin, no longer in circulation, called a guinea, which is said to have been the price paid for the guinea pig.

    For those who know and love them, guinea pigs are also called pigs, oinkers, piggies, and wheekers. The sexes are referred to as sows and boars, just like pigs.

    Fanciers today enjoy thirteen different breeds of the domestic guinea pig. But from the 1920s to 1970s, enthusiasts showed only three breeds: English (American), Abyssinian, and angora(Peruvian). The guinea pig fancy was limited to these three breeds until 1973, when a fourth, the white-crested, was accepted into the standard, followed by the numerous breeds enjoyed today.

    Domesticated and Wild Guinea Pigs Today

    The formal scientific name for the domestic guinea pig is Cavia porcellus. Biologists categorize the guinea pig like this: class Mammalia; order Rodentia; suborder Hystricognathi; family Caviidae; genus Cavia; species Cavia porcellus. Guinea pigs are considered by researchers as hystricognath rodents, a group that includes animals such as porcupines, chinchillas, and mole

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