about guinea pigs health.

Question
my name is jenny. i have 2 adorable female guinea pigs. And my question is my guinea pigs feet is like having dry skin or where it peels or something is this normal? And how do i take care of my 2 guinea pigs feet?. And also is it normal for my guinea pig to eat fur or hair on my other guinea pig.,? why do they eat other guinea pig fur or hair? Also my guinea pig pees and poops in her bowl, and i trained her not to do it, but she just the habit on peeing and pooping her bowl every time. Can you give me advice on what to do?
thank you so much.

Answer
Gosh Jenny, I hate to have to tell you this but what you're experiencing is normal for many pigs.

Dry skin on the feet is easy to take care of. Plain Vaseline is good for that. Just rub it into the feet twice a day and that will help take care of the dryness.

If it's the coat itself that's showing dry skin that too is common this time of year. My Teddies do this every summer. It's not as common in short smooth haired pigs such as Americans. But the coated animals seem to have issues like this.

A good bath with a gentle shampoo and some cream rinse helps. If the dry spots are really bad you can rub in some mineral oil onto the skin, then bathe them in a couple of days to remove the residual.

Chewing on their neighbor's coat is what we call 'barbering' and is a bad habit very difficult to stop. It's especially prominent in the longhaired pigs and some will barber themselves. Always an upsetting thing when they do this two days before a big show and have all but ruined their show coat.

Many breeders believe that barbaring tendencies are passed in generations and some will simply stop breeding that line if they have more than one or two that have shown that behavior. We don't know why they do it, it's not because of dry skin, parasites, etc. It's just a bad habit like thumb sucking or teeth grinding. Very frustrating for the owner.

As for the dirty potty habits, again guinea pig behavior. My herd is 60 strong and I have two (only two) pigs that will go to one corner to do their business. The rest go wherever they happen to be, even if it's sitting in their dish. It's easier to put in bowls that clip to the side of the cage where they must stand on their back feet to reach it, but even then they'll sometimes get in there anyway. Babies are the worst for it but we excuse them because they're babies and don't know any better. I have no excuse for the adults who do the same thing.

They don't seem to see it as a problem for anyone but the owner. I hope this helps a little bit.