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Excercise

T

T&A

Junior Guinea Pig
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Hi,
I feel that my guinea pigs aren’t super active and want them to be more active. They don’t like floor time whenever I do it and i find they just hide under their hides after exploring for 5 minutes. What can I do.
Research has suggested that things like harnesses are bad for them but I don’t know how else to get them moving more, for their health ( especially to reduce likelihood of formation of bladder stones which can happen with lack of excercise)
 
How big is their cage?
You don’t need to necessarily provide floor time if they don’t like it if their cage is big enough.
It also depends on age - how old are your piggies? Youngsters will be more active.
 
They are 2 years 8 months and have the FERPLAST 160 cage. They are boars and seem happy in this cage
 
If you have the space and budget for it, I think a bigger cage is the way to go. They'll naturally be more active just for having more space to potter around. Harnesses can cause physical damage so I wouldn't use them personally (like choke chains for dogs, don't get me started). Do you have any outside space you could get a run for?
 
I have a playpen with a cover to it for the guinea pigs. My garden is AstroTurf so couldn’t put them on there so would end up with them on the stone patio. I put them out 2 summers ago but they didn’t deal with it very well and hated it so I haven’t put them in it since. I don’t know what else to do
 
That cage is fine - it’s a little over the minimum size for two boars.

At their age, they probably won’t be zooming around much like they would have done as youngsters. Just trying to think back to that age for my now 5 years olds. The only time they really are very active was during their lawn time.

You can’t really do anything though, they tend to like mental enrichment rather than actually running about
 
Fair enough. They do have a run around the cage a little bit when I scatter their food but it quickly stops. They don’t seem unhappy in their cage, i just wish they were more active. The cons to their cage is the 2 separations because it makes it harder for them to run as it isn’t an uninterrupted floor space. This makes it hard to set the cage up in a variety of ways aswell.
 
I have that cage and when in use I tend to use the end section as a hay area.

Piggies don’t tend to like open spaces so floor time for some piggies doesn’t work and they may do better with a playpen indoors so that it can be partially covered. It can simply be c&c grids tied together; even grids attached to the front is the cage so they can come and go as they please during playtime
 
Yes, their litter area is in the end section and they have 2 hides in the main section
 
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