Routine Care

We keep a bin of routine care supplies for our weekly health checks. Each week, we:

  • weigh them and record the weight in the MyGuineaPig app. Weighing is important because weight loss can be a first sign of illness.

  • assess their body shape and feel for any bumps and lumps or injuries. Piggies do have scuffles and arguments that can result in injuries, as we recently learned first-hand.

  • see if their nails need to be trimmed.

Keep scrolling to see all the details about what’s in our kit and how we do weigh-ins. These are the products we use and bought with our own money or made ourselves — no affiliate links, no perks, no agenda.

What’s in our Routine Care Kit?

  • Scale

    We like the style of scale with the pull out display, much easier with wiggly piggies. We bought ours at Amazon.

  • Nail Clippers

    We use people clippers and like the Tweezerman brand; we picked up a set to use just for the piggies at Target.

  • Styptic Powder

    A wet q-tip dipped in this can stop bleeding if a nail gets clipped a bit short. We ordered it from Amazon.

  • Q-Tips

    Useful for lots of things, and we always keep some near the styptic powder. Small boxes of these are easy to find in the Target travel section.

  • Slicker Brush

    The piggies enjoy a nice brushing! We bought this Kaytee brand one at Amazon.

  • Storage Bag

    A little bag that fits everything except the scale. This design we found at Amazon makes us smile.

  • My Guinea Pig Bowl App

    We use this app to track the boys’ weight, vet visits, etc. We downloaded it from the app store, and it’s also available on android.

  • Storage Bins

    Can never have enough of these. We add removable labels to each bin and line them up in our cabinet. We bought ours from Amazon.

How we weigh the piggies every week

  • 1. Prepare the scale

    We pull out the display on the scale and put our largest pasta bowl on top.

  • 2. Add a towel and zero the weight

    We like to add a comfy cozy towel so it’s nice on their little paws (and okay, also so they aren’t walking all over our pasta bowl), and then we zero the scale out.

  • 3. Weigh a pig

    Add a pig, and wait until they stop wiggling their chonky donk enough to get a stable weight. We like weighing in grams. Record in the MyGuineaPig app.