How much water should piggies drink daily?

[Cute_Guineapigs]

Hi

I've had my piggies for nearly 4 weeks now, and I'm completely new to piggies. I have a pair of adult boars.

They have 2 water bottles (as I thought it was better for boars to have 2 of everything), one is a Classic ball bearing bottle, and one is a non-dripping ball bearing bottle. The non-dripping bottle needs to have the ball bearing pushed quite hard to get any water out, and they rarely seem to drink out of it. The Classic bottle has a light ball bearing, and they used to drink about 80ml out of this bottle daily (between 2 piggies). That's all they would drink daily.

In the past few days, they even stopped drinking out of the Classic. I've checked both bottles and they both operate fine. So I've offered them a shallow water bowl as well, which I don't think they've got the hang of yet.

They get 2 portions of vegs per day, which has a lot of water in it, like cucumber and lettuce, and they sometimes get tomato and berries. But I'm sure this isn't enough water to sustain them.

Should I get new bottles? If so, which ones do piggies seem to like? How much water should they drink daily?

 

[Wiebke]

There are no hard and fast rules as to how much piggies should drink, as the intake is very individual. Some are drinking only very rarely and others can drink down a small bottle (300ml or more) per day - at which stage they should be checked by a vet once you have made sure that it is not a leaking bottle. Weather and temperatures also have a major influence on how much piggies drink; the intake can change from one day to another with our current weather.

Guinea pigs should get about 50g of mixed fresh veg per piggy per day (in as many servings as you like). Up to 80% of the daily food intake should be hay to keep the guts stable and the crucial back teeth ground down evenly. Only feed unlimited pellets until your piggies' weekly growth rate is slowing down at a few months old, then reduce it slowly to the half to handful that fully grown adults need from about 15 months onwards.