Preventing Your Guinea Pig from Catching the Cold or Flu

It's that time of the year again and your guinea pig can get sick easily.  Their are ways to prevent this.  I learned this quick and almost lost my guinea pig.  I want ot educate everyone on this so that you take the right measures to save your guinea pig and so thay don't get the common cold or flu. 

Your guinea pig is a "wild animal" or at least will still act it in some situations. Guinea Pigs in the wild like a lot of other animals will hide their weakness or sickness so they don't get picked off by the predator. The predator picks the weakest one in the group. Guineas unfortunately will hide sickness almost til it's to late. Most the time when you see that your guinea pig is sick you have about 24-48 hours. So acting quickly is crucial.

Ways to prevent the cold.

• Add vitamin c to the drinking water all the time.
• Feed fresh vegetables, carrots, dark leafy green lettuce grapes, melon, watermelon each night
• Feed hay everyday try to get timothy hay
• Hold Your guinea pig each(explained in a little while.)
• Fortified Food with Vitamin C
• Keep cage and Guinea Pig out of drafts and cold rooms and especially outside
  

Take to the vet immediately like I said it only takes 24-48 hours to take their life. If you can't get a hold of a vet or can't make it for a couple hours. Then you can try to keep them warm, you can put a little vicks vapor rub above their nose with minor colds and it won't hurt them. That's why the vitamin c is so important because it helps them fight off colds and flus just like us. If anyone is sick or getting sick don't let them handle the pigs and definitely up the vitamin c dosage for the guinea pig.

Holding your guinea pig everyday gets you use to they way they should feel the usual first sign of a sick pig is loss of weight and sneezing. The weight loss is really obvious because you will feel almost like a skeleton.

Try to get in the habit off at least 3 times a week even though you can do it everyday.  Feed them Carrots two of them, and a leaf of lettuce do this every night for added health for your guinea pig and this will help prevent the guinea pig for getting the cold or flu.