Do guinea pigs get a lot of illnesses? That’s the question that I, Ludo, am answering today in our A to Z Challenge.

Illnesses we know about

Generally, I can only tell you about illnesses I, or my forebears, have had.

Mummy says guinea pigs are generally pretty healthy if given the right food to eat (see E). If you keep an eye on their weight you can pick up on things quickly. The most common problems are teeth-related and bladder related. Both are easy to sort out with a good vet, and by that we mean one who specialises in ‘exotics’, because that’s what we’re classed as.

We sometimes get mites or lice or other skin problems, but there are sprays, baths, or other treatments for those.

other illnesses

Arthritis. Lots of older pigs get arthritis, including me. I have metacam daily, which is a painkiller. It’s very tasty. So does Victor, which is odd because he was diagnosed with it when he was just one year old. He fell over a lot when running around in the garden run, so Mummy took him to the vet, who found he had arthritis in his hips.

heart trouble. Biggles and Humphrey both had heart trouble and they had special medication for it. They both lived to over five years old, so it must have helped. Fred and George had heart murmurs, but they were fine.

thyroid trouble. Biggles also had thyroid trouble. Dr Rebekah realised that when he lost his hair on both sides. She said symmetrical hair loss was a classic symptom of thyroid trouble. He had expensive meds for that.

brain trouble. Some guinea pigs have strokes, like some humans do. Hector and Percy died soon after, although mummy helped them eat and everything. Roscoe had a stroke and had trouble walking for a couple of weeks, but he died later, which was sad. Victor the First had occasional fits. He had one at cuddle time once, he leapt straight up in the air, then sat down, then woke up a few seconds later. Midge had a fit too, but he died the next morning.

breathing troubles. There are several things like your coughs and colds, and pneumonia, that we can get. They are treated in much the same way as yours, including a smell of a Vicks on the nose for stuffy noses, and antibiotics for real illnesses.

bad lumps. Most lumps aren’t bad, they are either fatty (sebaceous cysts) or abscesses from bites. Abscesses need cleaning and are very smelly. But they heal up, and fatty lumps are harmless. Sometimes they are tumours. Most times the vet can remove them, as they did for Roscoe, Hugo, Dougall, and me (mine wasn’t a tumour but it might have been). And Percy had a tumour in his jaw that couldn’t be removed, which was sad.

illnesses we don’t know about

Apart from the mystery shrinking disease, which nobody understands, that’s about all the illnesses we know about. Mummy says the mystery shrinking disease is horrible, and she hopes she never sees it again. Dougall and Oscar both died of that. The vets don’t know what it is either.

So, there are quite a lot of guinea pig illnesses, but most pigs only get one or two, and usually they die of old age. (See letter Y later this month.)