I didnt think u could bathe the guinea pigs til after the treatment is done. 10 – 14 days apart from 1st dose, thats when the adults die & new babys appear. Cause mites burrow under the skin when wet & causes seizures. So they should hold off bathing til after doing the 2 lots of drops over the 14 days period. Then using melesab wash & leaving on for 10mins. They could use the cream canestan in meantime to help the skin.

Hi Ana. I don’t think there is anything safe enough but you could try a cool bath if you are careful to keep the water out of their mouth and nose, and they are tolerant to handling.

Hi Helen. That’s certainly sounds like mites, and I would’ve thought the treatment would be working by now. I definitely would either get back in touch with your Vet or seek a second opinion.

Thanks so much for your article. I recently brought my two 2year-old gp’s inside for the winter (we live in the uk). The stress of the move seems to have caused an outbreak of mites in one but not (as yet) the other. When I brought them inside a fortnight ago, I bathed them and applied my usual topical anti mite serum from the pet shop. A week later, and one had lost all of its hair from its bottom up, leaving only hair around the head and neck. Skin is scaly with white bits all over that look like dead skin. I took them to the vets, who confirmed mites and gave me more topical mite serum for the back of their necks. I treated a week ago, cleaned cage thoroughly (hadn’t seen your article then) but she is still scratching so much. Today, two weeks after the first treatment and a week after the second, she’s scratched herself that much that she has nasty, open, bleeding sores all over one side of her back, near to the bottom. Should the treatment have worked to ease the itching by now? Should I go to a different vet, incase it has been misdiagnosed? I don’t know what to do. Thank you

Hi Michael. I understand your position as it is the folk wisdom, but the article is intended to debunk this myth. Never in my career have I seen reinfestation except by the introduction of new (carrier) cavies, and I have done this thousands of times by now. It would be very hard to observe the same findings in large groups but it’s easy to see with smaller numbers of isolated household pets.

Hi Teagan. The mites are very specific to guinea pigs, and so we think that an outbreak can also occur when a carrier guinea pig has a drop in immunity. Then the mites can cause symptoms and be spread to the other pigs in the group.

Hi Steven. Check with your vets as they might (like I do) only charge one visit for the whole lot if it’s all for the same thing. Otherwise you are probably right in just getting the two in-contact animals treated as long as you enforce the quarantine afterwards as well.