Sunny Sunday Warning – When Water Bottles Go Bad

This has left our me quite upset but I needs to share it so other people keep a look out for it too.

This morning when the little hoomans were changing the water they noticed that Nacho and Noah has hardly drunk a thing and were lying around in the cage appearing quite listless. I immediately realised they were dehydrated and began syringing water into them. Very quickly they perked up and returned to their normal selves in under twenty minutes.

Looking much brighter

I then had to try and work out how they could have become dehydrated with a full bottle of cool water in it’s usual place on the cage when yesterday was one of the hottest days of the year so far here.

Answer? A broken water bottle.

Yes, I couldn’t believe it either but it appears that a piece of food, it looks like carrot, had somehow got itself stuck behind the ball bearing in the bottle and resulted in it not letting water out. With it now removed the whole thing works much better but I did pop out quickly and buy three water bottles so now both cages have two each and there is a spare if one does break.

Luckily there was no lasting damage but with the weather warming up the chances of heatstroke occurring are much higher and without water it could have been a very different story.

The most frightening thing is we clean the bottle with a bottle brush and rinse it through once a week to prevent this and that happening. We did that yesterday morning, yet somehow during the day it still happened. Please check your piggies water morning and evening, especially in hot weather.

If you need advice on how to deal with or prevent heatstroke in guinea pigs we have a page here.

Stay safe this Sunday efurryone

~ Amy (AKA The Hooman)