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I'm looking for a hutch, but have read ramps are a no no for guinea pigs. Every guinea pig hutch I can see has ramps.
All OK?
They can jump so ramps shouldn't be a problem in their ongoing escape bids!
When the kids had them our hutch had a ramp and they quite happily zoomed up and down it. We had some gripper tape on it which I think was there to help with their claws.
I didn't have much to to with them to be honest.
We have a ramp in ours .. Guinness pigs don't have a problem with it
Just trying to imagine how an animal native to the Andes wouldn't be able to handle a ramp!
Usually fine, but can be an issue if one pig wants to go down while another wants to go up, inside the cage on a narrow ramp.
One of ours ended up falling or being pushed off from half way up ramp, so only approx foot off lower cage floor, she was motionless for best part of a minute before returning to her old self.
Far more entertaining to house them indoors, our group lived in a pen in the lounge.
Our used to like tubes, chewing wires, being where your foot was going to be in the next few seconds, my beard, whooping.
Just make sure if you give them a tube that has nothing to get their claws caught in.
I miss our pigs.
They sometimes need training to use the ramp but once they've got it, they're OK. But once they get old they can struggle with it - the ramps on two tier hutches tend to be too steep for an older pig to get up and they end up stuck on whatever floor you put them in on. Some are also just straight up too dim to use it - when one of our first pigs died, the one it lived with who was the dunce of the two forgot how to use the ramp because he wasn't being shown how to use it by the other.
We have an Omlet Zippi single height run with a shelter in one corner for the outdoor run (the UK isn't a good place for guinea pigs to live outside full time - it shortens their lifespan as the extremes of the temperature range don't suit them) and a roof cover designed to fit it. It's been much better than any wooden hutch we've had - it's bigger, but it's also predator proof - they can't dig into it or flip it over. The best thing about it is that it's much more long lasting than wooden hutches - wooden hutches tend to degrade as you move them around and in the weather, and we found we were replacing them every couple of years particularly if there'd been a bad or wet winter. This will last forever. Also, because it's made of thin green mesh it blends in with the garden and isn't such a carbuncle as a rotting wooden hutch.
They're not the cheapest, but we've saved it in the cost of buying replacement hutches easily and they're often available on Facebook Marketplace (I see there's one in Rotherham, which I don't think is that far from you?). We got ours off Ebay for £50.
The lads love it.
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These guinea pigs have an outside playhouse converted with foam insulation throughout and will have a hutch inside the playhouse.
Bloody royalty they're gonna be
That sounds fantastic! Confirm ours also have no issues with ramps. Or of leaping off things all over the shop whilst 'popcorning'
Can I also just mention that as a small pet for kids to 'learn', we absolutely love the GPs, as does our dog. Weirdly, the GPs love the dog back too.
They are such communicative, interesting, and tame animals, an absolute hoot. Their pavlovian response of screaming the whole neighbourhood down when they hear the rustle of a salad bag is hilarious.
Depends on the bike, but they should be able to handle small to medium sized ramps.
Unless they're MVDP...
Yeah, ramps. No issues whatsoever. Ours live in a 2-storey hutch that's also suitable for rabbits. I added some carpet to the ramp to give them extra grip over plain wood but not sure they actually need it. Echo the GPs being brilliant small pets for kids, and popcorning is indeed hilarious as is how loud they can be for such small creatures..
Anyone hoping to see a link to a YouTube clip of a guinea pig on an Evel Kneivel stunt ramp?