Feet - Colour?

[Allena]

Sounds daft, but what is the correct colour for a healthy guinea pig's feet? My Freddie's 2 hind feet are pink but his 2 front feet are blackish in colour. Our Vet seems to think he's fine, but I just wondered if anyone here could explain to me why the strange duel pigmentation (sorry, no pun intended!) of his feet? Thank you.

 

[Guineapigfeet]

It’s just the colour of his skin, which I think relates to fur colour to some extent.

One of mine has all black paws & claws (golden-agouti fur) one has all pink paws & claws (white and ginger fur) and one has a mixture; two black, one pink and one patchy paw! (White and brown-agouti fur) the dark paws &claws match with dark fur and the pink paw & claws matches with her while fur. Not sure what happened with the patchy paw, it looks all black until you get right up to the toes, then it turns pink - which means she has clear nails on that paw too

 

[Wiebke]

Sounds daft, but what is the correct colour for a healthy guinea pig's feet? My Freddie's 2 hind feet are pink but his 2 front feet are blackish in colour. Our Vet seems to think he's fine, but I just wondered if anyone here could explain to me why the strange duel pigmentation (sorry, no pun intended!) of his feet? Thank you.

Guinea pig feet can any colour - pink, black, brownish if the skin pigmentation is ginger or brown etc...
If the markings run right across the feet, they can differently coloured toes or heels. The same goes for lips, ears, or even nipples and genitals! Nothing to worry about.

 

[Freela]

The skin color of a guinea pig goes along with the fur over top (you can see this most clearly in skinny pigs that have different patches of color on their skin that would coincide with different fur colors if they had fur!) Therefore, pigs can have patches of dark skin/fur and patches of light skin/fur. Dark feet or ears is just the skin color showing through where there isn't any fur. Pigs can have pink feet, black feet, brown feet, all matching or none matching. Just the way their pigmentation goes.

Just to give a couple of examples from my own pigs. Hadley has a dark agouti upper face but a white spot on her chin, and you can see the underlying skin difference on her lips, dark on top and pink on the bottom:

Leela has the same kind of thing going on with her ears- she is white with both red and dark brown patches and one of her ears has both pink skin corresponding to the white patches and dark brown corresponding to the dark brown patches. The other ear is lighter brown, as it's in the middle of a red patch:

 

[Merab]

My Jemimah has pink lips apart from a dark patch in one corner.
I first thought she’d cut her lip until I was able to check properly and see it was just her colouring.

 

[Allena]

Guinea pig feet can any colour - pink, black, brownish if the skin pigmentation is ginger or brown etc...
If the markings run right across the feet, they can differently coloured toes or heels. The same goes for lips, ears, or even nipples and genitals! Nothing to worry about.

Thanks everyone.