How can we add enrichment into our piggies’ lives? Read on to find out some ideas to get you started.
Every Guinea Pig’s daily routine should offer opportunities for enrichment alongside their basic needs being met. While welfare requirements are aimed at ensuring the physical health of our piggies, enrichment aims to maintain the mental and emotional health of our Guinea Pigs which is equally as important in providing a happy, fulfilled life.
Companionship
Arguably the most important way to guarantee your Guinea Pigs’ having an enriched life is companionship with their own kind as well as this being a welfare need. Guinea Pigs are social creatures and so having a friend (or friends!) that they can display normal behaviours with is extremely important. This can be chatting with each other, forming and maintaining social bonds through behaviors such as foraging and grooming each other and being able to take comfort from one another. Every Guinea Pig needs a friend and one they like too! If you are struggling with finding the right friend for your piggie or looking to add more friends why not send us a message!
Hay and more hay
Piggies LOVE hay! Hay plays a huge role in our guinea pigs’ diet and also is a great way of providing enrichment. Giving hay in large piles offers opportunities for burrowing, making a cozy den for sleeping in and foraging experiences. A lot of guinea pigs get excited for fresh hay but if you want to add something extra why not sprinkle some forage on top. We would highly recommend The Nibble Nook for all your foraging needs!
While the majority of their hay should be meadow or timothy hay, why not make them a hay buffet and let them try different types such as oat, alfalfa and rye. Many hay companies, such as the HayShed, (use code ‘BunnyJackpot’ at checkout to help us and our residents out too!) offer sample boxes of all their different types of hay making it simpler than ever to offer small amounts of different hay types. This can make a fun change for our piggies to try new textures and flavours of hay and if you mix it in with their normal hay it promotes foraging to find their favourite strands!
As above, hay piles are great and should always be available, however offering hay in a different way can be exciting and help our piggies use their brains just that little bit more. Stuffing hay into different items such as toilet roll tubes, egg boxes or even a cardboard box with holes (a safe head size of course!) can create an interesting challenge for our piggies. If you don’t want to go DIY then Hay cubes from brands such as Nature’s own are available to buy as well.
Change of scenery
Everyone loves seeing something different every once in a while. A Guinea Pig’s enclosure is their whole world so something as simple as changing the layout of items available can add new ways to explore a familiar environment. Adding in or rotating through different items such as tunnels, hides, beds and hammocks offer new experiences while more confident piggies may enjoy exploring safe areas of the house in free roam time or even in a run in a new area of the house. In warmer weather we can also look at getting our piggies outside to enjoy some sunshine and fresh grass in an appropriate safe run with supervision. Don’t forget a fresh pile of hay wherever you introduce them too!
Ditch the bowls
Bowls are boring – veggies, pellets and forage do not need to be given in a bowl and can be presented and experienced in so many different ways. Scatter feeding can be a great way to encourage natural foraging behaviour while they use their noses to look for their favourite bits of veg or pellets. You could even put some on top of tunnels and hides to encourage stretching though this may not be suitable for some older piggies.
Why not make a clothesline out of some string to tie their veggies to so they have to work a little to get it? Snuffle mats also offer a great way to give pellets, forage or even treats like pea flakes and encourage use of their noses to find them. Supervision is required for these to ensure that everyone is safe at all times.
Chew toys for guinea pig
Hay is the most important thing for piggies to chew but some piggies just want to chew anything and everything so why not give in to this natural behaviour and offer different chew toys. Chew toys can be made from natural resources such as willow, sea grass and hay as well as coming in many different shapes. By providing chew toys of different shapes and textures your piggies can experience these differences as well as having somewhere to focus that chewing behaviour. Our chew toy recommendations can be found on our amazon store front linked here.
Enrichment safety for guinea pigs
There are a lot of different chews and toys marketed as safe for piggies but a lot aren’t so here’s a few of our top tips when deciding if it’s safe for your piggies:
Contents
Safe toys will contain hay and grasses, some types of woods, dried herbs and flowers and not a lot else! They should not contain any seeds, nuts, dairy products, honey and dyes. Be careful with products containing glue and any choking hazards such as small parts and strings.
Safety
Any product has the ability to cause harm through it becoming damaged so ensure to keep an eye out for any wear and tear. Holes in products should be carefully considered as to whether they are safe, for example the wire balls frequently sold in pet shops have been known to cause injury through piggies getting stuck in them.
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If a product is marketed and says it’s safe for multiple species of small animals it’s probably not! Rabbits, Guinea Pigs, Hamsters, Gerbils, Degus and birds all have very different needs so it’s almost impossible to have a toy that’s safe for every species so best just avoided all together.
