Amino: guinea pigs 🐹, cage cleaned.

I’m on Amino in the group “Guinea Pigs 🐹”

My post in amino the group

I cleaned the guinea pig cage today and set it up. okay, actually it was yesterday because it’s after midnight that I am typing this, now it is Tuesday. It was Monday when I did the cage.

Taking out all the toy balls, their food dishes, water bottles and blankets was fairly simple. Had to shake off all the blankets and their little pillow bed, I will wash it later because I have three or two of everything for them. You never can be to safe, until it impedes your happiness in life.

 


Grandpa babysits guinea pigs…

After taking both ButterCup and Jalmon, my guineapigs, out of there bin, I brush them off and I used a damp cloth to wipe the crusties from their eyes. I couldn’t put them in the usual spot during the cage cleaning because I usually have one clean bin and one then that they are currently in, because it is heavy to lift to dump in the trash and I have somewhere safe to put them. Because the other cage was unavailable at the time do to someone else using it for something else -family Life, sisters you know- I placed them on a pillow on the sofa and they were pretty content. It wasn’t their usual pillow / Guinea bed that I usually put them on, but if I don’t put them in their own bed separate from each other they tend to have some serious arguments and hair pulling, while on this sofa, on top of a pillow, they did not fight at all and Buttercup was purring most of the time, while my dad sat next to them watching the replay of Super bowl Sunday.

-apologies for my tendencies of run-on sentences-

The process included dumping out everything from their bin into the trash. Then I spray it with white vinegar to remove spots, then I rinse it out with hot water. I only put it back together after it is fully dry. I laid down paper towels with no coloring or plastics. *(You have to be careful about paper towels because some of them contain die and plastic rather than just paper; which could cause problems with their poops and digestive check.)

I was out of corn cob -dust free corn cob- so I had to skip it this time. Brand name I usually uses “Kaytee” recently a lot of stores have been sold out.

I fill it up about 1 inch deep with a paper type bedding, the brand names I use for this are “carefresh” usually in the gray color with no dye added. Then I use 100% cotton towels, washcloths, hand towels and I lay a few down covering half of the bottom of the cage on top of the fluff / bedding. ButterCup prefers to lay on a washcloth or a pillow rather than the fluff directly. Then I hang a blanket between the uncovered up fluff and the covered up fluff to act as a curtain for them to hide in / behind / under. I make that side of the been completely dark by Lane towels over the top and down the sides so that they can hide and be warm in the winter. In the summer that usually just have a thin blanket shielding them from any excess light. In the summer I also close one of the windows or even pull down the shades on both to keep it cool inside the room. I have a lid on their cage, the plastic bin has a plastic lid where I cut two very large holes and added wire mesh screen, so that the cat that was with us at the time would not get in the cage and mess with the guinea pigs. I don’t normally have a lid on them, otherwise.

Dishwasher

Along with putting their toys back in their cage after having the plastic balls go through the dishwasher along with their food dish, I will also put in any of their feeding spoons.

I never put the water bottles in the dishwasher because they are plastic and I fear they will begin to leak, I haven’t washed them through the dishwasher yet and they have not leeked yet so fingers crossed.

Water bottle issues…

I usually rinse out the water bottles with very hot water and after filling them with water shaking them jumping out the water filling them with water again, repeat a few times, add a couple drops of Dawn soap in and repeat the shaking and filling and dumping out and filling and shaking and dumping out again etc etc repeat on repeat. Basically, any germs that were in there are dead. I do the same with the mouthpiece except I give it some extra scrubbing all over the inside and outside. The outside of the bottle part, of the water bottle, I give a simple rinse with just some simple soap and water. I do not use a baby bottle brush cleaner on the guinea pigs water bottles because the water bottles are plastic and using something as abrasive as a baby bottle brush cleaner would cause micro scratches inside the water bottles and germs would collect. However, if I had glass water bottles I would definitely use baby bottle Bristol cleaners to scrub the inside of the water bottles, but I do not have glass water bottles, I have plastic. I could put them in the dishwasher, but if you think about it, not everyone who has guinea pigs as pets has a dishwasher in their kitchen. There are many people in the United States, Canada and multiple places around the world that do not have dishwashers other than the kitchen sink and their hands. To wash it by hand is not that much of a big deal, but it can be a big deal if you don’t do it correctly and then your guinea pig get sick. I always tend to worry about that. I know I wouldn’t want to drink out of a dirty water bottle, why would they? Yes, ButterCup does infect know the difference. She will literally refuse to drink from the water bottle that I gave a quick rinse and refilled. She will only drink from the water bottle after I wash it correctly. Yes she is a picky piggy but I love her and Jalmon can’t tell the difference between the water bottles cleanliness.

I would normally continue and say a bunch more, but I do have a headache and I think sometimes I make posts that are just way too long.

Anyways they did some really cute stuff today, I mean yesterday Monday LOL, they are purring on the sofa next to Grandpa watching football, they didn’t try to run away but Jalmon started falling into the sofa and my dad (Grandpa) saved her from getting stuck inside of the sofa. Which was the point of him watching them by the way. I couldn’t effectively watch them myself while putting the cage together. I would usually set up the fence or have the other bin ready for them, but there is too much going on in the house and so I was unable to set up their fence.

Quick fun facts about my guinea pigs in particular oh, if I put them on a pillow on a sofa, they don’t leave the pillow, they sometimes laid off by mistake, but they never mean to leave the pillow. If I put them on the sofa with no pillow underneath of them, they will run back and forth on the sofa from side to side, on repeat like crazy or slowly walk around that’s sofa in an awkward zig zag motion. If someone is sitting on the sofa, a human, and the guinea pigs are directly on the sofa not on top of the pillow, they will usually try to hide behind the humans behind / butt.

All right that’s all for now.

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