Velvet & the Guinea Pigs’ August 2010 Update

Guinea pigs image

I have 7 guinea pigs and a rabbit who live in a shed outside that I bought especially for them; their building is known as the ‘animal shed’ and they often have their exercise running around on the floor and in my rabbit’s case jumping on top of all the hutches. There are 4 hutches altogether in two blocks, one block near the door, and the other near the window. Recently my dad built in an air vent into the shed to make it that little bit cooler in all the hot weather; this air vent is in between the two blocks of hutches.

By the door, there are two guinea pig hutches, the bottom one is Charcoal and Stars’ and the top is Aurea and Gerty’s’. Over by the window there is a hutch twice the size of the guinea pigs’ (it really is huge!) which belongs to my rabbit, Velvet. On top of his, is Orchid, Pixie and Hazel’s hutch. Because Velvet’s hutch is bigger than the one on top of it, a ledge at the front id created where Velvet lives to jump up on to and lie down.

I try to let all the piggies and Velvet, my rabbit, out every other day, so they can get their exercise. We are in the process of building a huge outdoor run for them all, but all the animals love exploring their shed.

Yesterday, when I let all my small animals out I put a layer of grass on the floor, that I had just picked, to try and replicate their natural environment – I do this a lot.

Star is the guinea pig on the left, and her sister Charcoal is on the right.

Whilst my guinea pigs, all apart from Charcoal, were out running about and eating the grass, Velvet had taken a sudden interest in the bale of hay that I store in their for my Shetland ponies. He had jumped on top of it and sat nibbling the hay rather than eating the fresh grass! Ok, so the guinea pigs and Velvet do get the hay from the same bale as well as the ponies, but normally my rabbit never misses the opportunity of consuming fresh grass.

Charcoal, the joint eldest guinea pig along with Star, her sister, really isn’t that friendly. She refuses to come out of her hutch (which is ground level) and join the other pigs playing. Instead Charcoal will patrol her hutch and guard it from any other guinea pigs, apart from Star, entering. She has even bitten and scared off my rabbit!

Aurea, my Abyssinian guinea pig, decided to keep going into Charcoal’s hutch no matter how many times she was chased out by an angry Charcoal. In the end (after about 10 chases) Charcoal just put up with Aurea going into her hutch and even let her eat some of her food! Charcoal has only ever permitted Star to go into her hutch whilst the rest of the herd were out playing, and once let my smallest guinea pig Hazel in for a look around.

Gerty, Aurea’s sister, who has longish hair but no rosettes, is probably the shyest of all the guinea pigs, along with Pixe. These two won’t go anywhere near Charcoal, and tend to be huddled up together in Velvet’s hutch (I leave all the hutch doors open) but only when Velvie isn’t in there.

My black rex rabbit gets on excellently with all the guinea pigs apart from Charcoal. Even though they are great friends, he has his own time out in the run to let of steam and his own hutch which he does not share with the pigs in case of accidental injury. Thankfully there’s been no sign of Velvet’s paralysis returning. A couple of years ago Velvet injured his back (believed to be done by twisting too quickly) and paralyzed his lower back and back legs for a couple of months. Much to the vet’s surprise he appears to have made a full recovery.

So, yes yesterday, the guinea pigs and Velvet were running round for over two hours! I took so many photos of them and even a couple of videos – all the photos used on this post were taken yesterday.