'Happy Hairless Cavies'

Flintshire, North Wales, UK

Email: anne.cavies@googlemail.com

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Caring for Hairless Guinea Pigs 

The care of hairless (skinny) guinea pigs is very similar to ordinary guinea pigs in some ways because they eat a similar diet and need similar caging/bedding but there are some very very important differences!

Firstly and most importantly .......

Skinny guinea pigs MUST be kept warm at all times. This is so important that I cannot repeat it often enough -

Hairless Guinea Pigs MUST be kept WARM AT ALL TIMES!!!!

If you do not, they will die and this can happen in just an hour or two!!

Because they have little or no fur they have no natural means of keeping warm. Just imagine what it would be like as a human if you wore no clothes all of the time. Their cage needs to be kept at a minimum of 20 degrees C (68 degrees F) continually (ie 24 hours per day, 7 days per week!) and ideally a few degrees warmer. This usually means the room their cage is in should be heated continuously during winter!! This is especially important with very young hairless guinea pigs because as their body mass is so low they will get cold very quickly if not kept somewhere warm. Putting loads of straw in the cage and a blanket over the cage is not enough. If you are relying on central heating to keep the room where they are kept warm the heating must be kept on throughout the night. If you cannot afford this then some alternative source of heating should be used to keep their room warm when the main house heating is turned off. If you cannot afford to give skinnies a warm place to live then you cannot afford to keep hairless guinea pigs.

The first time you handle one can come as a surprise if you are only used to handling ordinary guinea pigs as skinny guinea pigs are so warm to hold!

They aren't really any hotter, but because there is almost no fur to insulate them you feel their body heat immediately - so make sure your hands are warm first otherwise you will give them quite a shock!

But don't go to the other extreme and overheat them! I don't know exactly what the maximum safe temperature is that they can be kept at, but I guess its probably around 30 degrees C (86 degrees F). If you are in their room with only a tee shirt on yourself and you feel cold then its too cold for your skinny guinea pigs! Or if you feel uncomfortably hot then its probably too hot for them as well.

Secondly and just as important ......

Their skin can get dry and requires moisturising at least once a week  with E45 cream which is very gentle and non-irritant. Their delicate skin can be prone to mites and the first sign you may notice of this is that they start scratching themselves and can easily cause themselves to bleed. If they do catch mites they will probably need to be taken to the vet who can treat them with ivermectin.

The picture below shows the typical 'cage' I use for one of my mothers with her litter. There is plenty of space inside the 'cage' (well actually you can see its a very large storage box of the type you can get from a large well known DIY store). There is plenty of fresh hay (which has been laid over the top of several sheets of newspaper or 'Carefresh'), a good sized water bottle, dry guinea pig food and a fresh apple. On another day you might see a cucumber or tomato or almost any fresh salad in there for them to munch on.