Lorcan
Forum Buddy
All those things I'd forgotten come along with keeping guinea pigs, and in trying to avoid a health scare freakout on my own part (and actually doing quite well with it all things considered), I've been thinking about their hay. Because good grief will Camowen and Bann eat so much of it.
I first had guinea pigs half a lifetime ago, back when I used to pride myself on "making the hay last". Cringe. Then Comet and Blitzen arrived and they'd eat whatever hay you put anywhere near them. No fussiness, just "gimme gimme gimme". They mostly got the Nature's Own 5 a Day hay. It came in 1kg bags I could stack neatly into the spare cupboards. There was also Burgess hay chucked into the mix occasionally.
The current dilemma is two-fold. I no longer have the space to be storing plastic bags of hay no matter the size. I'm also wary of plastic bags on hay in general, not because of the pigs themselves, but this past couple of years I've been trying to avoid plastic packaging on a few things - kitchen roll, toilet roll, that kind of thing. Plastic bottles bother me less because those can go into the recycling but plastic hay wrapping, not so much. I also don't drive, so farm hay isn't really an option - Rochdale's hardly farming country.
The second dilemma is, though they'll eat all the hay I give, they are fussy. They don't appreciate the soft hay very much
.
They've been through roughly 6/7kg of hay in 3 weeks (and they do eat the vast majority of it, I should point out). They arrived with a mostly full bag of Nature's Own meadow hay and a barely used box of timothy hay. I've had a couple of different hays in since - 1kg of Burgess Feeding Hay and a small bag of Small Pet Select's 3rd cut timothy. They have half of the 7kg box remaining, that's it. And that's the hay they really, really want. It's not even soft hay, it's...I want to say proper stalky timothy, you know what I mean? It's definitely not meadow hay and meadow and timothy are the only two hays this particular company sells. It's also £23 for a 7kg box, which is a fair amount at once. It might be less cost effective in the long run but smaller boxes more often is easier to budget, and they only sell 7kg boxes.
So, here I am, very long post later. If you'd told me I'd be on the lookout for a box of stalky-as-possible timothy hay 3 weeks ago, I'd've laughed at you. Now I've got a box on order from elsewhere and thinking either they'll like it, which is great, or they'll still demand the first box. At which point I mix the two together and hope they won't yell at me too much for it.
I first had guinea pigs half a lifetime ago, back when I used to pride myself on "making the hay last". Cringe. Then Comet and Blitzen arrived and they'd eat whatever hay you put anywhere near them. No fussiness, just "gimme gimme gimme". They mostly got the Nature's Own 5 a Day hay. It came in 1kg bags I could stack neatly into the spare cupboards. There was also Burgess hay chucked into the mix occasionally.
The current dilemma is two-fold. I no longer have the space to be storing plastic bags of hay no matter the size. I'm also wary of plastic bags on hay in general, not because of the pigs themselves, but this past couple of years I've been trying to avoid plastic packaging on a few things - kitchen roll, toilet roll, that kind of thing. Plastic bottles bother me less because those can go into the recycling but plastic hay wrapping, not so much. I also don't drive, so farm hay isn't really an option - Rochdale's hardly farming country.
The second dilemma is, though they'll eat all the hay I give, they are fussy. They don't appreciate the soft hay very much
.They've been through roughly 6/7kg of hay in 3 weeks (and they do eat the vast majority of it, I should point out). They arrived with a mostly full bag of Nature's Own meadow hay and a barely used box of timothy hay. I've had a couple of different hays in since - 1kg of Burgess Feeding Hay and a small bag of Small Pet Select's 3rd cut timothy. They have half of the 7kg box remaining, that's it. And that's the hay they really, really want. It's not even soft hay, it's...I want to say proper stalky timothy, you know what I mean? It's definitely not meadow hay and meadow and timothy are the only two hays this particular company sells. It's also £23 for a 7kg box, which is a fair amount at once. It might be less cost effective in the long run but smaller boxes more often is easier to budget, and they only sell 7kg boxes.
So, here I am, very long post later. If you'd told me I'd be on the lookout for a box of stalky-as-possible timothy hay 3 weeks ago, I'd've laughed at you. Now I've got a box on order from elsewhere and thinking either they'll like it, which is great, or they'll still demand the first box. At which point I mix the two together and hope they won't yell at me too much for it.
lol
Three different vendors, it's not even funny!
