A Simple Cavy Health Chart

An incredibly important aspect of animal husbandry is data organisation. Knowing exactly what your animals needs are requires a picture perfect memory or an effective management system. Like many aspects of cavy keeping this is another of those topics where everyone in the fancy has their own personal style and methods that work for them. If you are new to cavy keeping you might not yet have anything in mind. This blog, is for you. 

So what do you need to do? Some of the most basic aspects of health care include regularly weighing your cavies, the use of oral ivermectin to control worms and other parasites, bathing and shampooing your cavies to keep them clean, using a topical treatment or dip such as Fidos Fre-Itch Rinse Concentrate to control mites and other parasites, clipping nails and trimming the coats of long haired varieties and the nether regions of mating boars to avoid nasty hair tangles.

I use a simple excel chart to keep track of these tasks. It provides a clear visual timeline so that I know what I need to do next, for which cavies and when. Below, is a sample of the completed chart.

It is read from left to right. So you simply put the cavies name, then their weight and an X in the boxes for the tasks done on that day. The date goes at the top. If you don't weigh or do any other tasks with a cavy on that date, then just leave their columns blank. It makes it easy to see then if one of your piggies is being missed or hasn't been treated for a while. Likewise, you can read along the row to easily assess any differences in weight that are being recorded.

The check boxes have codes at the top, which is basically a legend for the following tasks:
 

If you would like to download a copy of the chart to use with excel click this link and then click "Download This File" complete the captcha and open it with excel. 

Or if you would like to print a pdf version and just write on it click this link and click "Download This File" complete the captcha and open it with your preferred pdf reader.

  As I said, this is just a basic chart that I use and you may alter or adapt it to suit the needs of your caviary. There is no real right or wrong, the main thing is to develop a method that works for you.