Guinea pigs in the bedroom?

Status
Not open for further replies.
claire8234

claire8234

Teenage Guinea Pig
Joined
Feb 23, 2011
Messages
564
Reaction score
6
Points
310
Location
Leicestershire
Hi everyone

Not too long ago I put up a post about what to do with my guinea pigs over the winter. The only space that can house a big enough space for them is in my daughters room and they will now be going underneath her midsleeper bed.

While they can now have a nice sized indoor house I am worried about how this arrangement will work. I remember my sister having hamsters as a kid and being kept awake by their noise!

Is this likely to be a problem or am I going to have a 5 year old kept awake by wheeking?

I am not a clean freak so I don't have any concerns regarding "germs"
 
claire8234 said:
Hi everyone

Not too long ago I put up a post about what to do with my guinea pigs over the winter. The only space that can house a big enough space for them is in my daughters room and they will now be going underneath her midsleeper bed.

While they can now have a nice sized indoor house I am worried about how this arrangement will work. I remember my sister having hamsters as a kid and being kept awake by their noise!

Is this likely to be a problem or am I going to have a 5 year old kept awake by wheeking?

I am not a clean freak so I don't have any concerns regarding "germs"
Click to expand...

Well mine are wheeking now & wide awake lol rolleyes:))
 
oh no! Don't tell me that!

Maybe if they are in the dark and its quiet they wont be noisy or am I hoping for too much?
 
I remember having a hamster as a child and it went round and round and round and round....in the wheel ALL night! Fortunately guinea pigs don't have wheels, and hopefully yours won't be bar chewers, so you should be ok with just a bit of shuffling and drinking noises. xx
 
my jinnywigs used to be in my bedroom, they only wheek if they want something, so if they've been well fed they wont wheek, the only problem might be the water bottle. and noisy toys were always taken out of the cage at bedtime! as long as you tire them out abit you'll be fine x
 
Thanks everyone

I'm hoping that once my daughter turns her lamp off they'll settle down and be fairly quiet.

She is quite a heavy sleeper so hopefully when she is asleep she wont hear them.

They make a tremendous amount of noise when they know its breakfast time but apart from that they are quite quiet piggies so fingers crossed.

My daughter is very excited about having the piggies inside for winter so I expect she'll be the one disturbing them :))
 
Last edited:
Hamsters are fully nocturnal. Guinea pigs tend to wake and sleep periodically. So they are bearable for some people. If your daughter is a light sleeper (like me!) it's probably not the best idea.

I have my two sows in my bedroom in a C&C cage. This morning they woke me at 6 because they were running around in their cage. One of the girls is on heat and was chasing the other one and rumbling. A few days ago they woke me at 4. 4! So yes. The DO wake you up early. If you feed them veggies in the morning they WILL start wheeking pretty early, especially if they hear someone rustling around the kitchen. This is the biggest problem for me. My two start wheeking at 7 in the morning. I'm not going to lie - I get really annoyed at them! Haha. They don't really wake me up during the night, only in the morning. If I could have them in another room I would, but my parents won't let me put them anywhere else :(

Here's a few things that I do to reduce the noise at night:
- Use fleece bedding. It's much less noisy when they're running around. Pigs also tend to love to kick shavings everywhere = lots of vacuuming!
- Take them out for floor time before your daughter goes to sleep so they can burn some energy and sleep longer.
- Use a waterbowl. Water bottles can be noisy.
 
Hamsters are more nocturnal than guinea pigs are, so maybe they will sleep once the lights go out. The only time I had to share a bedroom with one of my pigs was when we had just gotten Sundae and were keeping her quarantined to make sure there were no health issues. She drove me nuts at night- run run run, eat eat eat, click click click with the water bottle, then pause and repeat! However, she was extremely timid when we first got her and I think she was only active at night because she was terrified to come out of the pigloo in the daytime and thus was doing most of her activity once the lights went out. Now that she is a big lazy lunk, I bet she is old cold once the lights go off!
 
Our guinea pigs live in the largest of my kids two bedrooms. Both girls, due to swapping rooms, have shared the room with them.

At first they found the pigs woke them up regularly during the night. But after about a week, and they got used to the novelty of having the guinea pigs in their room, they got used to it.

The only smells we get aren't bad, just the smell of fresh hay. But our pigs are cleaned out regularly and it does need to be kept on top of. The few occasions when we've left full clean outs a day or two longer than we should, you smelt it. But they got dealt with pretty quickly and it was a good reminder of what the poor piggies have to endure if not cleaned out regularly. :(

My daughter who is currently sharing the room with them has hayfever and mild asthma. She's built up tolerance and now immune to their hay (excel hay, which is dust free anyway). Only time she sneezes with them is if she's helping with a full clean out. Her asthma is completely unaffected. Though her's is a mild case and each person knows their own health best, so don't take my word as gospel please!

We have the added advantage of an en suite in the bedroom that the guinea pigs are kept, which makes life easy for cleaning and washing things and topping up water bottles etc. Floors are wooden (tiled in en suite) so a quick brush round when feeding, cleaning or spending time with the pigs is all that's needed on top of normal hoovering that the non piggy bedrooms need anyway.
 
Just wanted to add. As your daughter is young, it would be best if you fit the top of the cage with a lid that she can't open. Just incase she decides to give one a cuddle when in her bedroom on her own. It can be very tempting for young children to do this, and often a cause of injury to guinea pigs going to visit the vets. ;)

The guineapigcages website has albums with photos of C&Cs which have lids on top. :)
 
I had my guinea pigs in my bedroom before (untill I had to get them a bigger cage and my boyfriend moved in with me)
I found them quite easy to deal with :) I am the kind of sleeper that doesn't mind small irritating noises much so I normally slept right through the night (anything like water bottles).
Guinea pigs could be a good alarm clock. If they wake up at regular times and start wheeking :(|) Was the only thing getting me up in time for school lol

I would say use fleece as wood shavings make SOOOOOOO much mess -___-
and its more quiet :)
If the caged is based on the floor then I don't think they would make much noise running around because the floor will absorb the impact and noise compared to if it was on a stand :)
I think it will be alright as long as the small noises or slight smells don't bother your daughter
 
I still have a huge bale of ecopet bed so I will see how we get on using that inside.

I shall make sure they come in over a weekend just in case they do disturb my daughter!
 
Monty use to live in my room and now Freddie lives there - Freddie is sleeping most of the night and does not wake me up - as long as he has a snack about 11pm to see him through the night! Freddie is on fleece, much less mess. I do get hayfever but in summer I leave the window open a little and that helps.

I also have a Chinese hammy in my room - he is also very quiet - gets up as soon as I turn off my light for bed but has a silent spinner wheel which works!

Monty use to wake me up but he was so noisy on his bottle and was quite ill at times so was restless and got up a lot wanting food/attention, he also had dental issues so I think he had toothache which woke him up and then he started wheeking for me so I was use to being up with him.

I remember with syrian hammys when I was a kid I had them in my room but moved them out overnight.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top