Am I Feeding My Guys Right?

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didipiggywiggly

didipiggywiggly

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hi everyone, I am fairly new to this site and to the joys of GP ownership. My two boys, toffee and fudge are a total joy, they are now 8 months old,( I got them in April as babies) and seem to be having the teenage angst and possibly teen growth spurt! -they seem to eat all the time and wheek wheek for food a lot - am I feeding them right?

I have a bowl each for them and put propriety nuggets in it, half full each morning. they have hay rack and hay ball and hay stuff play toilet roll all the time topped up several times a day. On top I feed veg twice a day, morning and eve. 2 - 3 Veg each time. For example a couple of cucumber slice, half carrot and big greens leaf each or piece of red pepper, romaine leaf and baby corn each. Am I giving them enough?, they are both cheeky, curious and look well, quite chubby and glossy coats. they have carpet play time each day and plenty of handling but always seem to be wheeking for food when I come near their indoor house. Do GP's know when they are full? or do they rely on us humans to do this for them!?
Simple Advice needed please, I have tried to read the guidelines etc on here and just getting quite muddled and worried. I want my boys to have a happy and healthy life, and I know I am responsible for that so it makes me quite nervous and worried.
many thanks, all advice greatfully received
 
didipiggywiggly said:
hi everyone, I am fairly new to this site and to the joys of GP ownership. My two boys, toffee and fudge are a total joy, they are now 8 months old,( I got them in April as babies) and seem to be having the teenage angst and possibly teen growth spurt! -they seem to eat all the time and wheek wheek for food a lot - am I feeding them right?

I have a bowl each for them and put propriety nuggets in it, half full each morning. they have hay rack and hay ball and hay stuff play toilet roll all the time topped up several times a day. On top I feed veg twice a day, morning and eve. 2 - 3 Veg each time. For example a couple of cucumber slice, half carrot and big greens leaf each or piece of red pepper, romaine leaf and baby corn each. Am I giving them enough?, they are both cheeky, curious and look well, quite chubby and glossy coats. they have carpet play time each day and plenty of handling but always seem to be wheeking for food when I come near their indoor house. Do GP's know when they are full? or do they rely on us humans to do this for them!?
Simple Advice needed please, I have tried to read the guidelines etc on here and just getting quite muddled and worried. I want my boys to have a happy and healthy life, and I know I am responsible for that so it makes me quite nervous and worried.
many thanks, all advice greatfully received
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It sounds as though you are doing a great job!
The wheeking is just seeing if they can get more out of you, they are not starving and I don't think they get 'full' (well, mine definitely don't understand this concept). As long as they have hay to graze on all the time, they'll be fine :D
 
Hi

Your piggies diet is not bad, although we would cut down on the nuggets, we feed each of our piggies about an egg cup full of nuggets once a day.. make hay available 24/7. We feed our piggies carrots and baby corn more as a treat, than part of their regular diet, as for big greens we only give them once a week. Red bell peppers they get 3 or 4 times a week. We also feed herbs like Coriander regularly, with herbs like Parsley, Dill occasionally.

This thread will give you some great ideas..
http://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/...or-a-balanced-general-guinea-pig-diet.116460/
 
Sounds fine to me. Piggies are choosy little devils, they will go for what they can get. If they wheek and get food they like, they will wheek all the more! They key is hay. They need 80% of their diet to be made up of hay and can have unlimited nuggets until they are adults. Piggies are fibrevours they need rough fibre, even cardboard and tree bark, or in the case of treacle, the plastic of his igloo! (That is just norty treacle)
 
thank you everyone, it seems I am doing kind of the right thing, :tu:can I just ask, when everyone refers to bell peppers is that the regular red peppers bought in supermarkets? (I am a bit daft at times) cos that is what I am using for my guys. Sometimes I give yellow or green but mostly red cos that is what I heard has the most vit c. both toffee and fudge seem to love their food, things that are crispy and crunchy (cucumber , celery, stalks of broccoli and spring greens). The other week I bought them very expensive spinach and they just left it! - no accounting for taste!
 
Yes Bell peppers is the ones in supermarkets, normally in packs of 3... 99p.. :D We give ours yellow and green also.. :nod:

Lisa & Ali..
 
the only thing would be to start to reduce the pellet amount now at their age. they really don't need many :)
 
Sounds about the same as what my 4 get and they are all happy and healthy. I do think that they can get full though because I put 2 whole bowls in the morning and sometimes they have not even eaten half when I get in from work in the evening.

Mine go nuts for spinach! Cant believe that you're left it. They also love curly cale, carrots, pepper, cucumber, tomato, celery. They hate thyme though so I just left the plant to die off.
 
Bell peepers is usually an American name! I'd noticed it's used on here a lot!
 
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