New Guinea Pigs: How to Best Manage Arrival and Settling In

[Wiebke]

Intro
1 What to do on arrival at home
- A welcome in piggy language
- Health check, sexing and weighing
- Quarantine or not if you have other guinea pigs?
2 Helping your guinea pigs to settle in
- Some practical tips for settling in new guinea pigs
- Avoiding predatory behaviours
- Skittish or ill?
- Group establishment and dominance
3 Handling and human interaction
- The food lure
- 'Taming' your guinea pigs
- Tailoring your approach
4 Further helpful tips and information for new owners


This article has been written under the title 'New Guinea Pigs: How to Best Manage Conflicting Needs and Advice' for Guinea Pig Magazine issue 71 in November 2022. It is property of Guinea Pig Magazine and is being shared on this forum with the permission of the magazine.

Intro
New pet ownership can be somewhat daunting once you actually bring your new piggies home and is often very confusing due to lots of different and often conflicting tips and advice making the rounds. This article is trying to help you work out what to do at which point during arrival and the settling in process in a very practical step by step way.

If you suffer from anxiety or other mental health issues and you find pet ownership rather stressful, then the very practical advice in this link here will hopefully help you to a better experience and to avoid the most common pitfalls you can stumble into: Pet Owners Anxiety - Practical Tips For Sufferers and For Supporters


1 What to do on arrival at home
Guinea pigs coming into a new place are generally very apprehensive anyway, so the best time to have a good look at them and to double-check their gender is straight away when you take them out of the carrier.

Any privately rehomed guinea pigs arriving in a bad state with overgrown nails, filthy hair and/or hair loss etc. will of course need immediate grooming and veterinary attention, either immediately or on the following day. Health and basic welfare always have priority before any other considerations.


A welcome in piggy language
Firstly, you want to welcome your piggies as part of your own family, though. Please gentle fondle their ears. You are telling them that you want them to be part of the group you are leading. This gives them a new identity and a place to belong.
Then gently stroke around their eyes and cheeks. This tells them that you cherish them. Picture in your mind how precious they are to you and how much you want to care for them but keep it gentle and not fierce.
Arrival in a home from the perspective of pet shop guinea pigs


Health check, sexing and weighing
Then please give guinea pigs a full body check while constantly reassuring them with a flow of gentle, soft talk, plenty of praise and piggy kisses. Lookfor any bald patches that are not symmetrical and the same shape on both parts of the body (like the ones behind the ears and in adult guinea pigs on the front legs) and hard lumps in the skin that are not symmetrical on the body. Please keep in mind that all guinea pigs have two nipples, looking the same in both genders. They may not be the same colour depending on the skin markings but the shape is always the same.

Then please check the gender. Please do not just look at the outside unless your boys have clearly descended testicles. Try to also peer into the slit underneath the knob that both genders have. Boars have a straight slit going straight down while sows have a Y-shaped groove with the knob nestling in the groove top and with the slit sealed with a fleshy arrangement just below the rim.
We have got a proper sexing guide with pictures in issues but if you struggle, please like The Guinea Pig Forum have both a sexing guide with plenty of reference pictures and also offer experienced help if you struggle with the hands-on part of it.

Then weigh your guinea pigs on your kitchen scales. Check around their ribcage whether you can just about feel the ribs (ideal), whether you can’t feel the ribs at all (overweight) or whether you can feel every single rib (underweight). This means that you have a good idea where your piggy is at weight-wise and how you want to feed them during the setting in phase.

Doing these checks while your new piggies are still not settled means that you can spot the most obvious issues that are already visible and also make sure that your piggies’ genders are correct. Mis-sexing is sadly not at all uncommon. Please be aware that issues like ringworm (a highly contagious, species jumping fungal skin infection) take 10-14 days to development after infection with a spore and that skin parasites may also not yet be obvious (most of them are invisible to the naked eye). There are no such things as ‘dry skin’ or ‘seasonal bare patches’ – these explanations from backyard breeders basically translate as un- or undertreated fungal or parasitic skin problems.
Especially in the USA, any sneezing and coughing needs to be vet checked and ideally treated as a respiratory infection (URI). An un- or undertreated URI can cause serious long term issues. It is sadly a major and all too common problem in pet store bought guinea pigs at the moment.

The initial health check also means that you do not have to catch and handle your piggies while they get their bearings in their new home in the coming days.
You may also want to consider whether you want to give a a rather skittish long-haired piggy a quick hair cut so you do not need to handle them straight away.

Of course, any medical concerns override anything else. Please do not hesitate to see a vet. While it may take a bit longer to make friends, the experience that you have made an ill guinea pig better again will ultimately contribute to the building of trust.
New Guinea Pig Problems: Sexing & Pregnancy; URI, Ringworm & Parasites; Vet Checks & Customer Rights

Illustrated Sexing Guide

Guinea pig body quirks - What is normal and what not?
Weight - Monitoring and Management
How To Pick Up And Weigh Your Guinea Pigs Safely (videos)


Quarantine or not if you have other guinea pigs?
Please conduct a two weeks’ quarantine if you bring any guinea pigs over 4 months that have not yet passed it at a rescue into a home with already existing piggies, ideally in a separate room. If you skip the quarantine because of a bereavement or young age, then you will need to treat all guinea pigs in contact with the new piggy if there is a contagious health issue.

However, if you have a youngster or two under 4 months you want to bond with your existing piggies (please don’t try this with boars), then you want to set up a bonding space outside the regular cage and introduce straight away. The need to for company and guidance in sub-teenage is overriding any other concerns.
Importance Of Quarantine
Contagion - Inter-species transmission and pet care during owner illness/pregnancy (incl. Covid)

 

[Wiebke]

2 Helping your guinea pigs to settle in


Some practical tips for settling in new piggies
- Covering the cage
Place a sheet or peg a beach towel over the top of the cage (or at least a good part of it) but leave the front open for you to keep a discrete eye on from a distance. This gives your new arrivals a feeling of protection while they get their bearings in their new home. Being able to smell and hear other piggies in your home is an additional bonus but not a requirement.

- Rubbing the cage with their scent
Once your piggies are out of the carrier take a bit of hay or fleece you have put with them and quickly rub it over the cage and furniture, including a water bottle spout – piggies go where there is a guinea pig scent. This will tell them that the new place is their territory and signal that it is safe on a very elementary level since guinea pigs always mark their group territory. It will help to speed up the settling in.

- Food and water
Leave them be as much as possible to encourage them to explore their cage. Make sure that you only have got houses or tunnels with two exits - at least one hut per piggy, since contrary to widely held opinion most guinea pigs prefer to sleep on their own for at least part of the time.
Place hay close by the huts since it makes at least three quarters of what a guinea pig eats in a day. Sprinkle some veg and pellets around the cage; it encourages exploration and natural behaviour and prevents them from using their food bowls as toilets and spoiling any contents. You want to enquire whether and what the place you are getting your piggies from is feeding in order to avoid tummy upsets. If your newbies are not used to fresh foods, introduce them slowly in small quantities at first, one new veg more with every successful meal to give the gut microbiome time to adapt.

Have two water bottles well at different ends, ideally with a little drip dish filled partially with water initially. Bottle drinking is a learned behaviour that youngsters copy from their elders. Not all new piggies will drink from a bottle straight away but as long as you are providing some watery veg (a slice of cucumber and a little lettuce), they will not dehydrate. The need to drink comes before the need to eat. An active and eating guinea pig will generally not dehydrate; some piggies will never drink and get all their fluid from their food. Please change your water daily, even if your piggies are not drinking and do the same for the drip dishes. The dish is an added safety measure for non-drinking new arrivals but it will unfortunately also make a popular WC for many piggies.
How Do I Settle Shy New Guinea Pigs?
Understanding Prey Animal Instincts, Guinea Pig Whispering and Cuddling Tips


Avoiding predatory behaviours
Especially with guinea pigs that are not used to a pet home environment or a good home, you can help the settling in process by avoiding to trigger prey animal instincts.

• Keep up a flow of gentle chatter as soon as you come into the room. A predator who makes noise is not hunting.
• Create distinctive pitches for different daily activities (food call, pick up/weigh-in, cage clean, exercise or lawn time, going back to the cage, medicating, praise etc.). Guinea pigs react to the emotion in your voice and to the different melodies, not to the words although they will learn their name and their companions’ names.
  What they will not get is the word ‘No’. If you have a misbehaving piggy, you assert your authority by fondling the ears a bit more strongly and if needed forcing their chin up. In their society what the leader says goes.
• Avoid sudden movements. Guinea pig eyesight is geared towards spotting movement for their far sight.
• Try not to loom over them. For a pick up, try to herd them to a suitable hands-off conveyance in a corner instead of chasing them. A gentle tap on the bum means ‘Move on’.

Skittish or ill?
Skittish piggies will hide and may not come out when somebody is in the room. Try to keep an eye on new piggies from afar so you can watch whether they are moving around, are active and are interactive with their companions.

Any piggies that are lethargic, off their food/losing more than 50g weight in just a few days (hence the value of the initial weigh-in) are obviously ill and should be seen by a vet as promptly as possible; the cost should be reclaimable from the place you have bought them if you present the sales receipt, the vet bill and if needed picture or video evidence within the first 2-3 weeks (UK) or month (USA). You may want to step in with feeding support.
Early Signs Of Illness
How Soon Should My Guinea Pig See A Vet? - A Quick Guide
Emergency and Crisis Care as well as Bridging Care until a Vet Appointment

Tips For Vet Visits


Group establishment and dominance
It takes around two weeks for guinea pigs to establish or re-establish a working group, whether that is with any new companions or in a new territory or both.

Once your new piggies have got their bearings, they will start working out their hierarchy. This comes inevitably with dominance behaviours. The leader will enforce first choice on housing, food and anything and in the extreme can do their best to keep the under-piggy away from any food bowls or chuck them out of any place. Having two of the same furnishings well apart and any houses and hides with two exits as well as sprinkle feeding any veg and pellets will go a long way to mitigate these behaviours. The under-piggy will submission squeal. They are NOT in pain (dominance behaviours are very carefully judged gestures of power). The squealing is proactively telling the higher ranked piggy that they are no rival to the other. It is the correct response to any dominance and part and parcel of establishing a group.

If an insecure leader is very much exerting their dominance, then please observe the protocol and feed, treat, handle them first; that way you can avoid upsets when the under-piggy returns to the cage. If you have a youngster who cannot cope with being left alone, then please always have them out with a companion on your lap or waiting close by for reassurance.

Please accept that no measure can prevent a personality clash, missing initial acceptance or the re-emergence of an underlying long term rift in a bonded adult pair.

Wait with exercise runs and lawn time until your piggies have fully settled into their new cage and do not trigger more dominance behaviour with yet more new territory until the group is firmly established.

I would also recommend starting with your weekly life-long weigh-in, body check and grooming at this stage. Always follow it up with an enrichment activity or special treat in the cage.

Reacting to group or territorial changes: Dominance and group establishment/re-establishment
Dominance Behaviours In Guinea Pigs
A - Z of Guinea Pig Behaviours
Bonding and Interaction: Illustrated social behaviours and bonding dynamics

Enrichment Ideas for Guinea Pigs
Potentially Dangerous Cage Accessories And Toys
Irritants to Avoid Around Guinea Pigs

 

[Wiebke]

3 Handling and human interaction

Interaction happens on many more levels than being the recipient of human cuddles on a lap.


The food lure
You can make friends a lot more easily firstly by feeding morsels through the bars. Find out what their favourite veg is and use small pieces to lure them as well as a ‘special well-done’ treat; it also a good way to teach them their new names. It may take time and a lot of patience to lure a timid piggy out. Be generous with praise and signal disappointment with your tone, but in a gentle voice.

Once your piggies take food from your hand, they have started to trust you. That is generally the time when you can start with handling, lap time, grooming and health monitoring. With a very timid piggy, you may need to start before they are ready but do so. With skittish long haired piggies, you may want to consider a quick short haircut around the bum and back legs upon arrival.

In order to prevent freak jumps that all too often end up with serious injuries, rather sit on the floor and use a hands-off pick up method. Please never let your children handle your piggies without supervision and never let them carry the piggies around.
If you pick up a piggy or put them back with your hands always have them facing toward you in case they blind jump; the risk of an injury is much smaller if they collide with your much softer body instead of the hard cage and you have more of a chance of catching them before they hit the floor. However, a conveyance you can place in the cage is much safer.

Your piggies will trust you a lot more if you listen to their messages as well and take them back when they have had enough. They will usually get wiggly, tweak you (may be painful), pull at your clothing or wee on you when they have enough - you will quickly pick up on their personal way. Unlike all the cuddling videos on social media, the majority of piggies actually prefer a short 5-10 minutes cuddle and some may never get further than just tolerate it.

Rather than human orientated lap time, make shared enrichment time or the daily feeding fun time. Let your piggies draw them into their own world – it is a much more interesting and fascinating one and creates a bond in which both of you meet much more as equals. That is why I prefer to ‘make friends’ with my piggies; I get so much more out of it.
Understanding Prey Animal Instincts, Guinea Pig Whispering and Cuddling Tips
Enrichment Ideas for Guinea Pigs
Children And Guinea Pigs - A Guide For Parents


‘Taming’ your piggies
The problem I have with the approach of handling piggies straight away is that it is totally human-centric and does override all the guinea pig instincts and needs. You basically impose your own will and force your piggies to learn ‘human’ but you are not returning the same courtesy as the supposedly more intelligent species.

As a result, deep split-second defence reflex bites and freak jumps are much more common in a human dominated interaction. As is the complaint of ‘My new guinea pig suddenly hates me’. No, they don’t; they have actually just started to trust you enough to tell you what they don’t like and have finally stopped playing ‘unresponsive prey’. It is one of their prey instincts that can mean survival if playing predator gets bored with an uninteresting play toy. Unfortunately, as we humans want a docile pet we can play with, this behaviour sadly totally fails with us.
" Biting" And What You Can Do (Biting, Tweaking, Nibbling and Nipping)
Who is the Boss - Your Guinea Pig or You?

Children And Guinea Pigs - Age Appropriate Interaction And Responsibilities.


Tailoring your approach
As with everything, it all depends on the piggies’ personalities and outlook. You can move forward much more quickly with guinea pigs that are used to a home environment and have to take a lot more time with extremely skittish ones.
You will also learn to pick up on your piggies different personalities and adapt your approach to what works best for them. The tips in this article are just a help for a hopefully good start.


4 Further helpful tips and information for new owners
For lots more helpful tips and practical information please have a look at our information bundle for new owners into which quite literally thousands of newbie owner questions on this forum have gone into. The link is worth bookmarking for looking up things quickly. New ownership is just the start of an ongoing journey but there are all these little and larger unexpected issues you invariably come up against.
Getting Started - Essential Information for New Owners

Of course, you are always welcome to ask any questions you have in our various Care sections. We will always answer them in a friendly and supportive way. There are no 'silly' questions on here; just things you (and in fact quite a lot of other people who dare not ask) don't know the answer to yet.