Hello, I’m Pippin, and I’m a guinea pig. Today is our last day of the A to Z Challenge, and I’m going to talk about Zoonoses.

We’re helping 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’ve been filling in the gaps this month, and Mummy’s going to put it all together over the next few months.

How do you say Zoonoses?

It’s four syllables – zo-o-no-ses. One zoonosis. Several zoonoses. Zo- says it’s about animals, -onoses is about illnesses and their transmission. So it’s about animals and the transmission of disease… in this case from Humans to Guinea Pigs and vice versa.

Some illnesses transfer easily from animals to humans, like bird flu, and things like that. You probably heard all about this during the Covid years. As far as we know, animals didn’t get Covid from humans, but there was a possibility of something like Covid transferring from birds to other animals. As far as we know, it didn’t happen, though.

What zoonoses are there for humans and guinea pigs?

Surprisingly few. Most aren’t infectious.

There’s a fungal disease called ringworm that can transfer, though. If you have ringworm you have to be careful not to touch it and then touch someone else. One of Mummy’s horses (she owns a very small bit of several) had ringworm and had to be kept in its own stable away from the others for about a month while it cleared up. So if your pig has ringworm, keep it away from the others till it clears up.

During Covid we had no record of getting infected with it. Humans were warned to keep scrupulous hygiene to help stop infecting people in their homes. That worked for us too. We don’t know of anyone who got Covid, even if their Mummy or Daddy got it. All the basic things apply if you have any disease, try not to give it to us: wash your hands thoroughly before and after handling us. Wear a funny mask thing if you think it best. But you probably don’t have to.

If one of us has got something that could transfer, keep us in isolation and wash your hands and anything we use throughly, and disinfect using a guinea pig safe disinfectant like F10 or Ark-Klens.

Nobody has made a link between your common cold and our Upper Respiratory infection, but that’s no reason not to keep your cold germs to yourself.

Mites might transfer temporarily to you from us, but they won’t stay because you aren’t their host. You can wash them off. We need to have ivermectin spot-on (there are several brands including Xeno, Beaphar and Naqwa) to get rid of them. If the mites are very bad we may need baths or even injections from the vet. But mostly we don’t get bad mites when we are in clean homes. Mites are common in recently rescued pigs, though, especially from neglected homes and pigs found roaming wild. Your Rescue won’t let you have pigs to take home if they have mites. Your pet shop might, because they often aren’t so aware.

So apart from general things we’ve already talked about, you needn’t worry about zoonoses. Not from us, anyway.

The End

So that’s the end of our A to Z Challenge for this year and we hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for visiting us, and come back on Monday for our Reflections post.

And watch out for Mummy’s book on the A to Z of Guinea Pig Care. She’s bound to tell everyone all about it when it’s finished.

Lots of love from me, Pippin, and from my shy mates, Ronnie and Reggie.

xxx