 Hey there, my name is Allison. Welcome to The Tiny Herd where we talk about everyday pet care for guinea pigs, rabbits, and other small pets. In today's video we're going to be talking about something very important that I do every single week with my pets that is pretty important to their overall health. And that is I'm going to be showing you guys how to do guinea pig health checks. So health checks are really important to do because they can really clue you in on any illnesses or physical issues that your pets are having before they get to the point where it's like a major medical emergency or it'll clue you in that you need to take your pet to the vet. So how do you do a health check? That's what I'm going to show you today but there's a couple things I want to mention before we get into that. Before we get into showing you guys how to do health checks today there's just a couple things I want to mention first. How often should you do your health checks? I usually do mine on a weekly basis. You do want to do them on a regular basis because this will enable you to see any trends or patterns or see if anything's getting better or worse. It'll also enable you to see if there are any fluctuations in weight and this is important to check often because weight loss can be one of the very first signs that an illness or an issue is happening. The second thing I want to mention is what you're actually going to need to do a health check. You really only need two things. First is a kitchen scale that measures in grams and I will have a couple options linked down below for you guys to check out including the one that I use and you also will need some kind of notebook or just a pen and paper but you want to have somewhere where you can record your pet's weight every single time you do a health check so that you can keep track of any fluctuations and any changes and then you can also just take any notes for anything you notice during the health check. The only other thing you need besides those two things is your guinea pig and the last thing I want to mention is a health check is obviously not a substitute for any type of vet care. This is really just a check to do on a regular basis to see if you need to be aware of something that your pet needs to go to the vet for if there's an illness brewing or anything that you need to keep an eye on or treat. So just wanting to put that out there it's just a good way to know if your pet needs medical care. So all that being said let's go ahead and I'm going to show you guys exactly how I do a health check with one of my guinea pigs. All right so we're in the pet room now all the guinea pigs are squeaking because they think it's dinner time and it's not but to start off I wanted to show you guys my scale that I use so this is just a kitchen scale with a bowl on it and again I'll have it linked down below but it does measure in grams which is important because that's the easiest way to measure guinea pig weight so we're going to be using this today. The other thing I have here is my pet care binder or pet care notebook. I use this to log our weights and I did actually just set this up which is why there's nothing written here and I will link the video that I just did showing you guys this so you can check that out as well but I use this to record their weights so that I can see any changes from week to week. So now that we have our two tools here I'm going to go ahead and grab a piggy and we're going to do a health check. All right guys so I have Lily here with me she's going to be our model today I'm distracting her with some lettuce obviously at the moment but I'm going to explain to you guys how I normally do a health check. So Lily is going to be our little model here but the first thing that I usually do is I check just kind of their body so when you do this on a regular basis you'll be able to tell if their body feels different or weird or if there's any like bumps or bulges and her body feels really good it feels normal. She's kind of like a pear-shaped piggy so her butt's a little wider than the rest of her and she looks normal that way she's not bloated or anything like that. Then the next thing that I do is kind of just check like her condition. So I usually start with the fur and I'll kind of like spread it a little bit so you can see like just kind of spread the fur so you can see the skin make sure you don't see any like fleas or bugs or anything like that make sure the skin doesn't look dry and scaly whatever color your piggy skin is so like her skin back here is black up here it's pink if your piggy's brown just whatever natural color your piggy is just make sure it doesn't look red or scaly or discolored or anything like that. The next thing I do is check the eyes and the ears so checking the eyes is really easy just take a look at them make sure that you don't see any indications of an infection or a hay poke so if there's any redness if they're swollen if it looks like there's something in their eye if they're keeping their eyes shut anything like that can be an indication of an injury or an illness so just make sure they look good and also check for any like little crusties in the corner of their eye or if their eye is watering a lot that can be an indication of an illness as well so look for those types of things and then to check the ears what I do is just pull the ear flap back and take a look inside and you're really just making sure there's nothing out of the ordinary some guinea pigs have a little bit of earwax or gunk in their ears but there's really nothing to worry about with that if it's something that's usually there if your guinea pig's ears are normally really really clean and all of a sudden they're having a whole bunch of stuff in their ears that can be an indication of an illness as well then make sure there's nothing like nothing in their ear there's no hay or anything that they don't have any indication of mites and then I like to check the back of their ears as well to make sure that they're not dry or crusty or anything like that so that is the main things I do to check body condition the other things you want to do are check your guinea pigs bum and belly area so I'll show you guys how I do that so usually I take the pig and I just hold it up a little bit so you can see I don't have her on her back I'm just holding her up just a little bit so I can see the underneath of her I just take a look at her lady parts make sure that nothing is swollen there's no redness there's no discharge her butt's not super dirty she doesn't have pee caked on her or anything like that and then for female pigs I do also like to check their nipples because crusty nipples can be an indication of ovarian cysts she actually does have a little bit of crusty nipples but she is a senior lady and that is just something that she has now it's not an indication of anything it's just because she's a little bit older so that's really how I check the whole body make sure if you have long haired pigs that you cut out any mats that are on their butt check if they need a bum bath anything like that and then the last thing that I do is I check their teeth and this might be hard to show you guys but basically what I do is I put the pig in front of me and I lift I don't know if you guys are going to be able to see but basically I lift two sides of their their mouth she's not going to let me do it I'll tell you guys the way that I normally do this I normally lay the pig on my chest and then take my two thumbs and gently lift up on either side of the piggy's lips so that you can see their two front teeth so she's not really going to let me do it to where you guys can see it but basically you just take either side of their lips and just lift up gently to where you can see their teeth I'll see if I can get a clip a better close-up clip to show you guys and insert it here as well I'm going to see if I can show you guys how I check her teeth so normally of course she's eating right now normally what I do is I lift the pig up and then I gently lift either side she's chewing right now of course no no I need to look at your teeth baby so I gently lift the top lips until I can see her teeth just like that she's mad right now because she thinks I have a snack for her but if you lay down on the floor or sit back in a chair a little bit so that you can look down and put the pig on your chest and then just gently very gently lift the corners of their mouth their little lips then you will be able to see their teeth so that's how you do it it's pretty easy pigs don't necessarily like it so you might have a little bit of trouble but once they get used to doing it generally you can do it pretty quickly and they'll let you and then you can move on when you're looking at their teeth you want to make sure that they are lining up properly you don't want one of their teeth to be way longer than the others if they're out of alignment then they're not going to wear down correctly and that's something that you'll have to get trimmed down or talk to a vet about so it's really important to check their teeth to make sure that there hasn't been anything weird going on they can get abscesses in their mouths or their teeth could for some reason start to be misaligned or you might not ever know they're misaligned until you check so just make sure their teeth line up their top teeth and their bottom teeth line up and just check for anything else weird that you can possibly see in their mouth but that's all you really have to do for checking teeth it's usually real quick for me I usually just put her on my chest lift up real quick to see the top and bottom make sure they're good to go okay so that's how I do a health check just check the body condition check their skin and fur check the ears check the eyes check the belly and the bum and check the teeth and then the very last thing which is really important is to weigh your piggy so I have our scale here you guys can see so I'm going to go ahead and turn it on and then what you want to do if you have a basket on or if you have a bowl on your scale make sure it says zero with the bowl on it because you don't want to be measuring the bowl you want to be measuring just your pig so once it says zero you just take your pig and you set them down in the bowl hopefully she'll hold still try to get them to hold still hey hold still for me hey hold still all right and her weight is 981 so I wrote that down in my pet care notebook which I will link if you guys want to learn more about it but that is where I track our weights so I can see if there are any fluctuations if there are any big fluctuations in weight between week to week then you want to get your piggy into the vet because that is one of the first indications of an illness so you definitely want to get that checked out one thing I also wanted to mention is make sure to weigh your piggy in grams because that is a lot easier to track than trying to use pounds or anything like that it's just a lot more precise of a measurement when it comes to little piggy weights there also isn't really a good indication of what is a good or bad weight for a guinea pig they all have different body types and they all have different normal weights so there's it's more of a body condition rather than an actual weight so generally you want your pig to be a little bit plump but you don't like you don't want to see their bones of course you don't want them to be super super skinny but you don't want their belly to be dragging along the floor really badly or them have trouble walking or anything like that so guinea pigs generally end up regulating their body weight pretty well if they're eating a good diet so you'll learn over time pretty quickly what a normal weight is for your piggy and it'll be easy to tell if there's any major fluctuations over a short period of time so that is the quick and easy version of how I do a health check the only other thing that I really do is whenever I'm doing these health checks I'm also just keeping notes on things that I want to address so for example she needs a little bit of a bum bath and a haircut just because she does have some longer fur on her butt so I'm going to make a note of that so I remember and then if anybody needs their nails clipped or anything like that that's what I write down as well so I can remember to do that when I have the time so that is really all I do for health checks once you get used to doing it it's really quick and easy to do every week and it's really important to keep up on the health of your pigs so that if there is an issue you'll notice it right away so I'm going to go ahead and put miss a lily fluff back so that she's not confused why her health check is taking twice as long as it normally does but she did very good being a model for us so thank you guys so much for watching today's video I hope it was informative and helped you get a better idea of how you can do a health check with your own guinea pigs if you did enjoy this video please hit that like button and subscribe if you haven't already I put up new videos every Tuesday and Friday if you have any questions or comments leave them down below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can but again thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one bye