How To Maintain A Guinea Pig Cage

Hi. My name's Marie. I'm the deputy manager of the Small Animal Department of Wood Green Animal Shelters in Cambridge here.

I'm going to advise you how to care for guinea pigs. I'm going to tell you how to maintain a guinea pig cage. First of all, make sure where you're housing your accommodation, it's warm, dry and safe from predators.

If you're housing your guinea pigs in a hutch, the best option is to place this in a shed. That will also keep the hutch completely protected against the weather elements as well. If you're going to be housing them in an indoor cage, make sure this is in a family room but a calm and quiet area.

You will need to be cleaning your cage out once a week. Everyday, you should be scooping out the accommodation as well and removing any soiled areas. But every week, remove the guinea pigs and completely clean it out with a pet disinfectant and that will help protect the wood in there as well.

Once a year, your hutch and your garden will need to be treated with a per-friendly preservative to make sure the wood is maintaining good condition. You may also need to re-felt the hutch and once or twice a year as well, again, to make sure that it's completely watertight. A good idea is to get some laminate flooring and sticky bed plastic.

What you can do is line this completely on the base of the hutch and then you can place your newspaper and hay onto it. When it comes to cleaning, that way, you can wipe down the surface and that just makes sure that the base of the hutch, the wooden floor, is protected against urine and isn't rotting away over the years. When you're cleaning out, make sure you spray down all the mesh and wipe this out as well and that will help it from rotting as well and getting any rust on it during the years as well.

There are many pet covers on the market which you can place on the hutch but the best thing really is that you can place your hutch in a shed and that will help protect it during the winter time and also keep your guinea pigs safe and warm and dry during the winter months and cool in the summer as well. That's how to maintain a guinea pig cage. .