Feeding times

[Jnusbaum817]

We have been feeding our 4-5 month old girls veggies around 6 pm each night and scattering pellets around 8am each morning since we got them 3 weeks ago, they are now almost all the way up to 50g veggies each. But when I started looking at adding variety for them ( right now they get romaine lettuce, cilantro, bell pepper, and cucumber(they don’t always finish the cucumber it’s not their favorite) I saw people saying that they feed their piggies veggies in the morning and at night. Do we need to feed veggies in morning and at night? Do you do 25g each time or the full 50g each time? We also feed each piggie from their own bowl so we know they get the right amount, do you do that for both feedings?

 

[Piggies&buns]

Some people feed veg once a day, some do it twice - it doesn’t matter.
How you choose to feed it depends on what works for you. You can split their one cup per pig in half and feed twice a day or give them the one cup full in one go.

You can’t easily measure veggies in grams due to the differing densities. Measure it by volume - they can have one cup per pig per day (when ive, out of curiosity, made their one cup portion and then weighed it, each of my piggies get something more like 80g of veg per day).

Just scatter the whole lot in the cage and don’t use bowls - it is much better enrichment and mental stimulation for them to forage rather than eat mindlessly at a bowl.
You really don’t need to worry about them each getting a certain weight worth of veg. Veg is just supplementary and not their main food intake - one day one may get a bit more but the next day another will.

I feed my piggies their veg only in the evening. I don’t give pellets at all.

 

[AidaB]

We were told at the beginning of our guinea pig journey, just do whatever suits you best, regarding veggies & pellets.

Our routine is everything in the evening, but split up- an hour or 2 between veg & minimal pellets. We scatter feed like Piggies&buns.
Mornings and throughout the day are hay top ups & dry forage sprinkled about.

 

[Ramia]

I do all veg and pellets in the morning.

 

[fluffysal]

I do pellets in the morning with fresh hay. Veggies and hay in the evening after cage cleaning and lap time. Both are scattered.

 

[Wiebke]

As we are around all day, so I split veg into a morning and an evening feed with hay being refreshed at need during the day and in the evening.
A small pellet treat is served by whoever gets up first in the morning and by whoever goes to bed last to keep the wheeking choir down as much as possible...

Guinea pigs are crepuscular. This means that they are most aktive at dawn and dusk when the temperatures are at their most moderate, so they come out to feed on grass and herbage at both ends of the day. They sleep in bouts interspersed with some browing around the denning area during the middle of the day and the night; which is why having them in your bedroom is not the best idea re. bottle banging and begging for treats in the middle of the night or early in the morning; or playing zoomies at 3 am...

But you are free to organise your own feeding routine around your own life as it fits in best. The piggies will adapt.

 

[Merab]

Our pattern is a romaine leaf, fresh water and hay in the morning.
I give mine about 1 tablespoon of pellets between 2 each morning as well.

If someone is around in the middle of the day which is more often than not , they get a few herbs.

In the afternoon they get their veggies and then a bedtime snack late evening which may be forage or oat grass.

This works for us and as piggies are basically appetites wrapped in fur they are always ready for food

 

[Jnusbaum817]

When people say herbs or forage what are they meaning? Where do you get forage?

 

[Piggies&buns]

Herbs - fresh herbs. Cilantro is safe to be given daily. Other herbs can be given but less often

Forage - this is usually a dried leaf mix: sometimes available from pet shops or even amazon. It will contain a mix of dried leaves and sometimes other items depending on the mix such as birch, plantain, dandelion, strawberry leaves, apple leaves, rose petals etc.
This is given as a way to encourage foraging and enrichment. You mix it into loose piles of hay for them to search for.
A small amount can be given sometimes daily (some items aren’t always suitable) but it makes up part of the pellet proportion of the diet.
I don’t feed pellets to mine but in winter they sometimes get a dried forage mix in their hay instead.
I’ve added a picture of an example of a dried forage available on Amazon

Forage can also be fresh, safe weeds from the garden - but not everyone would have access to those. I pick weeds to feed to mine in summer.