Hello, I’m Pippin, and I’m a guinea pig. Today I’m going to discuss Bowls and Bottles, and which we like better.

We’re helping out our Mummy, Jemima Pett, who is doing the A2Z this year by putting together all the posts we’ve done here on George’s Guinea Pig World, to make a book on Guinea Pig Care from A to Z. You can see her posts here: jemimapett.com/blog/. We’re filling in the gaps this month.

Bottles

The two main types of bottle: Percy is in the pet shop with a ball type (we don’t like them) and Bertie has the ‘sippy’ type. Both carers and pets have their preferences. Ball-types get bunged up easily, sippy types tend to drip, even when brand new. But that can be fixed by adjusting the metal thing that slides up and down to release the water. I like the sippy bottles. They’re fun to chew.

Bottles keep the water clean on the whole. But you have to clean them to make sure they don’t get algae, especially if they are in direct light. But it’s impossible for us to poo in them. Clean water daily is best. Twice in hot weather when we drink more. Or whenever we run out.

They can line up nicely if you have a C&C set-up. And we prefer to have enough bottles for one per pig.

Bowls for water

Water bowls need to be deep enough to get a reasonable amount of water in them, but not so high around the edge that we can’t reach in. Often elderly or sick guinea pigs find it easier to use a bowl than a bottle. Mummy does both with the sippy bottles because she puts a bowl under them to catch the drips. So we can drink from the bowl or the bottle.

You can often use the same bowls for eating and drinking especially in the garden. Don’t forget to give us water in bowls on warm days in the garden!

Colman never drank from a bottle. He had a big bowl of water and would take a drink, hold his head up and let it run down his throat. He had arthritis, so he probably couldn’t bend his spine enough to use a bottle. But he did live till he was eight, which is very old.

Bowls for food

Most bowls are fine for food, although most of us prefer the shallow type. Especially if we get on with our buddies so well we actually eat from the same bowl together. Generally with two pigs together, it’s a good idea to have two bowls, to help stop one hogging all the food.

Mummy prefers the ceramic ones that she can put in the dishwasher every now and then. The wide plastic ones are good too (we had silver, red and blue ones.) George is showing off the big bowls which are the ones that often came with cages. Although they are okay, they’re better for bigger animals. For a guinea pig who’s getting a bit old, they are hard to eat out of. And shallow ones are a must for four week-old boars like Dougall, or arthritic older boars with heart trouble, like Biggles!

Also we tend to stand on the edge of bowls in order to reach the other side. It’s best that they don’t tip up.

So that’s it for bottles and bowls. If you want to ask anything, just pop it in the box below 🙂 And come back tomorrow for whatever we’re doing for C. It’s not cats or carrots. It might be catastrophic!

love

Pippin xxx