• PLEASE NOTE - the TEAS facebook page has been hacked, take extreme care when visiting the page, for further information visit here

Banana leaves as Hay Replacement

In small amount, mine love apple, blueberry, watermelon, melon, and grape as well. Due to high sugar content, I don't give them fruits frequently. Veggies, I like giving them about three times a day in moderate amounts, which would add up to about a cup and a half per day.
Oxbow hay is given numerous times a day. Mind have large hay pans where they use as bathrooms and sometimes sleep in.
 
Hay is still the best food for them. If you can access hay then that's better. Do not replace it with banana leaves coz it's full of sugar. It should just be a treat. Just because that's all the others there do it doesn't mean that you have to follow them, especially when you have access to better food. She is just a baby so alfalfa hay is good for her. As she gets older, she will learn how to eat other food. It will also help her to learn if she has another pig to copy when it comes to eating. Baby piggies learn from the older piggies on what they are supposed to eat. Since you got your piggy as a baby, she doesn't have another piggy to teach her or imitate. Get her a friend and you will see the difference with her overall well being.

I think you meant the banana fruit.

Banana leaves doesn't really contain full sugar content, it also has high fiber content which is the reason why people feed hay to guinea pigs due to how much fiber it has. Banana leaves contain about 85% water and 10-17% protein (DM basis). Pseudostems (the trunk or stem part) contain mostly water (92-95%) and very little protein (3-4.5% DM) (Ffoulkes et al., 1977). Fibre content is high, in the 50-70% DM range for NDF and about 30-40% DM for ADF" (Feedipedia, 2011).

(DM) Dry Matter - dry foods (hay, dried forage etc; )
(NDF) Neutral Detergent Fiber - measure of fiber used for animal feed analysis (fresh leaves, fresh forage etc; )


(If anyone is interested in the complete nutritional content of banana leaves and effects on different animals, click here.)

Banana leaves contain large amounts of polyphenols such as epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG, also found in green tea. Polyphenols are natural antioxidants found in many plant based foods, source. A research has also been made that the affect of polyphenols on ovariectomized guinea pigs alters hepatic cholesterol metabolism, which may affect VLDL secretion rates and result in less accumulation of cholesterol in the aorta. Which means it keeps the cholesterol in check and it's specially good for spayed guinea pigs too.
 
Back
Top