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Not eating hay

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I know that 80% of a guinea pig's diet should be hay. But my guinea pig Jack won't eat it!

He has a rack full of lovely expensive Oxbow Timothy Hay and he is totally ignoring it! He also has hay for bedding which gets nibbled a little but not much. I have filled the hay rack maybe twice in the last 3 weeks, and he has only eaten any at all if he has run out of dried food.

He seems healthy enough - should I be worried?
 
Is his bedding hay the same as the hay in the rack? If not, I would put some of the Oxbow hay on the floor and see what he does. And maybe cut down on his dry food, or take it out for an hour or so and see if he goes for the hay instead.
 
He isn't eating a huge amount of dried food either - maybe half a bowl per day.

No his bedding hay isn't the same - he has the cheap nasty stuff from Tesco in his bedroom and posh timothy hay in the hay rack.

I tried leaving him in his run without his dried food, just the hay rack and whatever grass is left and hasn't turned brown - he still didn't really eat anything.:...
 
Does he eat a lot of fresh food?
 
Does he eat a lot of fresh food?

Yes that's the only thing he seems to be eating much of at the moment. He gets about a handful of vegetables and/or fruit per day and demolishes them very quickly.
 
Bumping this as I never really got an answer. Jack still isn't eating much hay, but is eating fine otherwise and his weight is steady. Should I try a different type of hay maybe?
 
My girls didn't really like the oxbow timothy hay and preferred the orchard grass (which they only get as a treat because it's so expensive). I get normal hay from the local feed supplier for bedding (which I change everyday) and for general eating. I also have Alfalfa King timothy hay and readigrass as sprinkling hays/ grass. However, they do get bored I think and find that they tuck in with renewed interested if hay's presented differently occasionally- stuffed in cardboard tubes/ tissue boxes, in a hanging food ball, stuffed in a paper bag or in a big box with doorways cut out of the sides. I also hide parsley or bits of cucumber in mounds of hay as they like to find the titbits then tend to settle down and munch on the hay. Anything's worth a try. :)


Also, they didn't like the compressed hay I got from p@h once- I think the strands were too short and bitty- they do like a nice long strand- I don't know what the tesco stuff is like.
 
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They might just not like that hay.

Out of mine some like this stuff from down the road but barney loves this special hay from p@h...

Worth trying different hay?

x
 
My 6 all love Oxbow timothy but they won't eat out of hay racks and it's got to be fresh, they won't eat it if it's been lying around for a while. So I just chuck a few handfuls in several times during the day and this keeps them going. If his weight is steady,he's probably having a sly munch when you're not looking so I wouldn't worry too much.
Flips ideas are all good! Just limit his pellets and make sure he has mounds of hay on the floor to play in and I'm sure lots of it will get eaten too. Most piggies love readigrass, so scatter lots of that round too.
 
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