Skittish guinea pig

[Fiona*]

Hi all, new to the forum and need a bit of advice. I've had 1 of my rescue pigs for 5 weeks. He is less skittish now will come up to front of cage, sniff my hand, take veg from me. But he wont let me handle him. I've tried picking him up in tube, he let me pick him up in a box once so now he wont go into box. I dont want to grab as I dont want to stress him or make him scared of me and only time I tried he teeth chattered. Just worried as I cant do nail clips or health checks. Help!I really need some advice here

 

[Wiebke]

Hi all, new to the forum and need a bit of advice. I've had 1 of my rescue pigs for 5 weeks. He is less skittish now will come up to front of cage, sniff my hand, take veg from me. But he wont let me handle him. I've tried picking him up in tube, he let me pick him up in a box once so now he wont go into box. I dont want to grab as I dont want to stress him or make him scared of me and only time I tried he teeth chattered. Just worried as I cant do nail clips or health checks. Help!I really need some advice here

Hi!

Skittish piggies are not easy. If necessary corner him, pick him up and put him into his conveyance until he gets the idea...

 

[Merab]

With some piggies it can take a lot of time and patience.
It took me 6 months with my Phoebe who was such a shy and nervous piggy.
It’s worth the work.
You’re doing well if he’s taking veg from you

 

[Piggies&buns]

One of my pigs is generally very comfortable with me, will take food etc. The other one has only consistently taken food from me for the last few weeks - I’ve had them for 18 months! Neither of them like being handled, not many guinea pigs do though, so it is a case of herding them into a Carrier and picking them up from that to carry out their health checks. The more confident of the two will make a manly protest initially but very quickly calms down and lets me carry out my checks. The other one will squeal and not be happy about it the entire time, so I have to carry out what I need to do quite quickly so as to not stress him out too much. It doesn’t matter what I do with him, he just isn’t going to be one for making it easy!

 

[Fiona*]

Thanks all it's just so hard to know what to do for the best. I'm happy to go at his pace but I'm worried about the welfare side of I cant pick him up to do his nails and things like that.