Two Guinea Pigs, One Fresh Start: Setting Up Their Home and Getting Food Right

Congratulations — and good instinct getting two. Guinea pigs are herd animals who chat to each other all day in squeaks, rumbles and purrs, and a lone pig is a quietly unhappy one. The hard part is already done. What's left is a bit of space planning and a surprisingly simple diet.

Here's how to set them up properly in their first week, without buying half the pet shop.

Space: bigger than the box says

Most cages sold as "guinea pig cages" are too small. Guinea pigs don't climb or use levels well — they need floor space to trundle, stretch out and do the joyful hop-skip known as popcorning.

For a pair, aim for a minimum of around 1.2 square metres of usable floor (roughly 120cm by 60cm), and treat that as a floor, not a target. A 150cm run, or a C&C grid setup you build yourself, costs less than a branded cage and gives twice the room. Length matters more than height.

Indoors is kinder in the British climate. Guinea pigs cope badly with damp, draughts and heat alike: they're comfortable roughly between 17 and 23°C, and temperatures creeping past the mid-twenties can tip into heatstroke fast. If they live in a shed or outbuilding, it needs to be dry, insulated, predator-proof and shaded in summer.

Guinea pigs don't need a penthouse. They need a long, flat, boring corridor they can sprint down at 10pm.

What goes inside

Keep it simple and solid. No wire floors — they damage guinea pig feet.

• Bedding: dust-extracted paper bedding, hemp, or fleece liners over absorbent layers. Avoid dusty sawdust and untreated pine or cedar shavings.
• Two hides, minimum. One each, each with two exits, so nobody gets cornered. Cardboard boxes work beautifully and are free.
• A huge pile of hay, in a rack or a hay-stuffed box they can burrow into and eat at once.
• A water bottle plus a heavy ceramic bowl — some pigs strongly prefer one or the other.
• A separate food bowl for pellets, and tunnels, a hay-stuffed toilet roll, an untreated willow ball for chewing.

Spot-clean daily, full change once or twice a week. Guinea pigs produce a lot of droppings and ammonia from stale bedding irritates their airways.

Hay is the whole diet, really

If you remember one thing: unlimited grass hay, always available, topped up fresh every day. Timothy, meadow or orchard hay should make up roughly 80 per cent of what they eat.

This isn't bedding you tolerate them nibbling. Chewing long fibre wears down teeth that grow continuously, and keeps the gut moving. Guinea pigs that run low on hay develop dental problems and digestive trouble, and both are miserable to treat.

Alfalfa hay is different — too rich in calcium for most adults. It suits pigs under about six months and pregnant or nursing sows, not a healthy grown-up pair.

Fresh greens and the vitamin C problem

Guinea pigs share an unusual trait with humans: they can't make their own vitamin C, so it has to arrive in their food every single day. Without it they develop scurvy — stiff joints, reluctance to move, poor coat, bleeding gums.

Offer roughly a cup of fresh veg per pig per day, split between morning and evening. Good regulars include:

• Bell pepper, especially red and yellow — one of the best vitamin C sources and most pigs adore it.
• Coriander, romaine or little gem lettuce, cucumber, a little celery.
• Kale, parsley and spring greens in moderation — excellent, but high in calcium, so rotate rather than feed daily.

Fruit is a treat, not a food group: a thin slice of apple or a strawberry a couple of times a week. Skip iceberg lettuce, anything from the onion family, potato, avocado, dairy, bread and human snacks entirely. Introduce new vegetables one at a time, in small amounts, and watch the droppings.

Pellets: a small, boring handful

Buy plain, uniform guinea pig pellets with added stabilised vitamin C — roughly a tablespoon per pig per day, in a bowl, not scattered. Never feed rabbit food: it contains no vitamin C and some formulations aren't safe for guinea pigs.

Avoid colourful muesli mixes with flakes, seeds and coloured bits. Guinea pigs pick out the sweet pieces and leave the fibre, which skews the diet and encourages dental and weight problems. Vitamin C also degrades in opened bags, so buy small, store cool and dark, and replace every few months.

The first fortnight

Expect them to hide. New guinea pigs often spend days in a tunnel, emerging to eat when the room is quiet. Sit nearby, talk softly, hand over a strip of pepper. Trust usually arrives as a wheek when they hear the fridge door.

Buy kitchen scales and weigh them weekly, same day, same time. Guinea pigs hide illness instinctively, and weight is the earliest honest signal you'll get — a steady drop over two or three weeks usually means something is wrong before anything looks wrong.

Check nails monthly, brush long-haired pigs several times a week, and do a quick daily headcount of appetite: are both eating hay, both producing plenty of droppings, both moving normally? That thirty-second check is the most valuable husbandry you'll ever do.

Then let them get on with it. A pair of well-housed guinea pigs is one of the most entertaining things you can keep in a living room.