Hi,
My 14 week old piggy, Zorro, has been growing speeTdily and has gained a healthy amount of weight as the weeks go by. I just wondered when a piggy like Zorro will stop growing.
Your boy is still in the initial fast growth phase, which lasts around 4-6 months; from then on in until about 12-18 months growth happens increasingly in spurts. Adulthood is reached at around 15 months.
Because the individual weight range varies widely in guinea pigs, the growth rate and phases also vary massively. Youngsters in optimal condition will reach a certain percentage of their ideal adult weight/size sooner than piggies with a smaller birth weight and from less optimatl conditions, who take longer to reach that point. it is roughly around three quarters of the optimal adult weight/size.
Please take the time to read these two information guides below, which you should find highly interesting because a healthy diet and a weight/size ratio can really push the average healthy life span from the lower end to the upper and beyond and can 1-2 years to a life. We don't have any control over what our piggies ultimately die from and certainly no control over any genetic time bombs, but we do have a chance to optimise the time we have got with our piggies. Not by being super duper owner but simply by being good owners and by concentrating on the quality of what we are doing and avoiding to fall into the trap of overdoing everything.
The guides deal with the very practical details but they also show you how it all connects and where you can really make a difference - and why. Here are the links:
Weight - Monitoring and Management
Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets
These two guides are part of our much wider New Owners guide collection, which is currently one of the most comprehensive and helpful around. You may want to bookmark the link, browse, read and re-read at need. Many of the guides you get different things out of when reading them at different levels of experience because things you have noticed or experienced will fall into place.
Here is the access link:
Getting Started - New Owners' Most Helpful Guides
You can access our full and even wider information resource via the Guides shortcut on the top bar where it is neatly laid out in thematic order.
