Constant supply?

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Miss Magpie

Miss Magpie

Teenage Guinea Pig
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I have dry food on constant supply for my piggies, their bowl is never empty as i fill it up whenever it gets low. They're on a mixture of tesco musli and pets at home nuggets. Is this okay or are you suposed to only give them a certain amount of dry food a day?
They have an unlimited amount of hay but i know thats 100% right.
 
as far as I'm aware, it says on the guinea pig shopping list i printed off, unlimited hay and ulimited pellats per day so presume your doing fine :)
 
Pellets should not be unlimited. Burgess (makers of Supa Guinea Excel) recommends 30g per pig per day, Oxbow 20-30g per pig per day. Not unlimited!

Hay should be unlimited and they should be fed a good variety of vegetables each day. If you do this then you would notice that the pigs wouldn't eat all the pellets anyway. Mine get about 1/3 of a bowl each a day and there is always a small amount left when I go to feed them at the end of the day so it would be a waste to keep their bowls constantly topped up as I'd be throwing out some out each day or having a bowl with stale pellets on the bottom.
 
As soon as i notice the pellets getting low i top up bowl after getting rid of whats there. When i said unlimited I didn't mean a massive bowl. There's enough in each bowl to give piggies 30g each a day, but just they always have some. I am not going to take the pellets away at the end of the day.
 
mine are unlimited but i doubt they even have 15g a day, a bag lasts me 3 times as long as it should, they've never had much dry, probably cause of all the veg. i keep it topped up though cause my hours at work :)
 
I agree with Scotslass, Hay should be unlimited that should be the main-stay of their diet. For dried food the amount should be fed as recommended on packaging.
 
Yes I keep all my bowls topped up with dry food and a bowl of veg every day and fresh hay put in everyday, so i must be doing it right
Thanks for advice on this topic
x O0
 
There's a lady in the US that developed a pellet around guinea pigs' nutritional needs (the company is called KM's hayloft) and feedback from owners. She is now contemplating making a pellet whose main ingredient is NOT hay because her research (I don't think it's published) has shown that piggies will gorge themselves on pellets when hay should be the vast majority of their intake.

Not coincidentally, when I feed my pigs I ALWAYS give them fresh hay before I feed the pellets and there's little interest in the pellets until they've obviously had enough hay and the veg supply is exhausted.

If you think about it in terms of human nutrition, pellets are to pigs what vitamin supplements are to us. Our entire nutritional needs should really be met through our diet but for one reason or another (laziness in my case, when it comes to my own eating habits!) we supplement to make sure we're not missing out on anything.

To me it just seems a waste when people give their pigs a full bowl (or several if there's lots of pigs living together) of food and then end up throwing a heap of it out at the end of the day. I'm guilty of doing this myself in the past so I think it's a case of cutting back and then ADDING more if need be rather than always using too much.
 
My 4 girls go through 4 handfuls a day (2 in the morning 2 in the evening) so I think that is ok the boys go through 2 handfuls a day and they are in pairs. So basically it is 1 handful per pig per day for my lot and I use burgess. :)

I top up with hay first and then give them veggies in the early evening I top pellet bowls up and hay racks and before bedtime they have more veg. :)
 
I only add 2 handfuls in the morning, then top it up through the day but forgive me, on the Guinea Pig shopping list I printed from here it says unlimited hay and unlimited pellats? ? Is this incorrect then?
 
If my guineas are out foraging for their food in the enclosure all day, and constantly grazing at grass or assorted other 'greens' then they shouldn't really need the dry food that day at all, in my opinion.
 
i think a fairer comparison than that of vit pills in humans is with orange juice or cereals. If the pellets are made from hay anyway then if they have added vits etc then can't be any worse than hay, although i agree cant be bad to get them full on the natural stuff as best as possible. My bowl always topped up & only limited pellet escapology. Surely pellets dont need throwing out every day or er ever?
Si
 
Even the stablised vitamin C that you get in pellets starts to break down on contact with light and air. So, within a matter of hours, the pellets in the bowls have less vitamin content than they did when they came out the bag (or, preferably, airtight container).

Hay isn't just to keep things moving through the digestive system - the long stemmed hay that they eat is number 1 contributer to keeping their teeth in check, something that the ground grass meal in pellets doesn't do.
 
I have a feeding device thingy and it is all covered untill they play with it for more to come out lol. I fill this once every 3/4 days and wash it out then and fill it back up. It never runs out so guessing they don't eat to much of it. I can't see to many pellets being bad for them surely anyway?
They also get 2 bowls of veggies a day morning and tea and pippin is now demanding lunch as well ;D
 
Too many pellets, assuming they're decent ones, aren't necessarily bad for them but pigs will sometimes gorge themselves on pellets and not eat enough hay. Most of the pellets in the UK are alfalfa (lucerne) meal based (Supa Guinea and P@H nuggets to name 2) which is very high in calcium. Too much calcium can contribute to bladder stones so it needs to be balanced out with the rest of the diet. It's easier to get a balance if you know how much they're getting pellet wise which you don't if you're constantly topping up their bowls.
 
Thank you everyone for your advice :)

I give my girls veggies, that kinda goes without saying. They love their hay, but i do make sure i put veggies and hay in before dry food. I also make sure I never leave old pellets in the bowl. They eat alot of everything that I give them hay, veggies and dry food. So I will start monitor how much dry food I give them and make sure I dont waste or anything like that. But i can assure you their interest in their dry food is nothing compared to their interest in hay and veggies O0

Thanks again everyone :)
 
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