Is too much kale bad for piggies?

Laura_Deakin

Laura_Deakin

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Hi there.. I feed my piggies kale coriander watercress every morning and night, a plateful. Is kale bad for them? One of my piggies is 1207 grams and the other is around 995 grams. Caramel seems to be gaining every week, she’s quite greedy and eats all of Oreos food. Has anyone got any ideas on how I can get caramels weight down? If I feed them less it means Oreo looses weight too and she’s underweight. I can’t separate them as they get very distressed. If anyone has any ideas!
 
Kale should be kept limited to one small amount no more than once per week. It contains a lot of calcium and too much calcium can cause bladder stones. Please cut it right down. Pellets and unfiltered Drinking water also contribute most calcium to the diet so keeping pellets limited to one tablespoon per day and filtering their water will help calcium intake reduce greatly.

try scatter feeding veg and pellets. It will mean they exhibit natural foraging behaviour, keep them occupied and it also means that both piggies get their share. she doesn’t know she is eating both portions, she doesn’t know some of it is meant for the other piggy, so spreading it all around the cage can help.

please don’t do anything to try to reduce weight gain. You also should not do anything to reduce her weight. Feed a good hay based diet with 50g Of veg and one tablespoon of pellets per day and that is fine.

please see the guide below for further information on how to check a piggies heft. It is much more useful to know whether a piggy is a good size for themselves rather than going by their weight. As there is such a wide variation in what is healthy , you cannot go by weight alone.
Weight - Monitoring and Management
 
Ok il stop feeding kale! What veggies should I be giving them daily?
 
Piggies&buns said:
Kale should be kept limited to one small amount no more than once per week. It contains a lot of calcium and too much calcium can cause bladder stones. Please cut it right down. Pellets and unfiltered Drinking water also contribute most calcium to the diet so keeping pellets limited to one tablespoon per day and filtering their water will help calcium intake reduce greatly.

try scatter feeding veg and pellets. It will mean they exhibit natural foraging behaviour, keep them occupied and it also means that both piggies get their share. she doesn’t know she is eating both portions, she doesn’t know some of it is meant for the other piggy, so spreading it all around the cage can help.

please don’t do anything to try to reduce weight gain. You also should not do anything to reduce her weight. Feed a good hay based diet with 50g Of veg and one tablespoon of pellets per day and that is fine.

please see the guide below for further information on how to check a piggies heft. It is much more useful to know whether a piggy is a good size for themselves rather than going by their weight. As there is such a wide variation in what is healthy , you cannot go by weight alone.
Weight - Monitoring and Management
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Ok il stop feeding kale! What veggies should I be giving them daily?
 
Eddie & Elvis said:
If you are in the UK leafy greens or spring greens are a good low calcium alternative to kale. I feed my boys this daily :)
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What do you mean by leafy greens? Do you mean things like little gem/romaine lettuce? I’ve been told by the pet shop that they can’t have celery or cucumber daily as it’s bad for them.. But you guys are saying I should give them that daily.. who do I believe 😩
 
Laura_Deakin said:
What do you mean by leafy greens? Do you mean things like little gem/romaine lettuce? I’ve been told by the pet shop that they can’t have celery or cucumber daily as it’s bad for them.. But you guys are saying I should give them that daily.. who do I believe 😩
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lettuce and cucumber is fine daily. I personally don’t give celery daily but that’s only because I don’t tend to habe it in very often, but there is nothing wrong with giving cucumber daily

the veggies on the sample plate in the long term diet guide are perfectly fine to be given daily

i actually don’t give spring greens daily but do give them once or twice a week.
 
Laura_Deakin said:
What do you mean by leafy greens? Do you mean things like little gem/romaine lettuce? I’ve been told by the pet shop that they can’t have celery or cucumber daily as it’s bad for them.. But you guys are saying I should give them that daily.. who do I believe 😩
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It's not lettuce it's more cabbagey...


I'd say a slice or 2 of cucumber is fine everyday but I'd limit celery to no more than once a week. Guinea pig diets are very complicated and with such conflicting information out there it can be difficult to get it right at first. I think I've got it worked out now and but it's taken me 8 months 🤣
 

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If you have them on a suitable surface you can watch their pee (if you've got nothing more interesting to do!) Excess calcium is excreted in the pee which sometimes looks 'milky' and can dry as a crusty white stain. This is not necessarily a problem unless there is a real lot of it because sludge can slow down the flow of pee which can lead to problems. So you might find that if you feed your piggies lots of kale you get lots of crusty pee... but swopping out for something like bell pepper means you see less. It's quite handy if you can monitor this way... but with two or three pigs it can be hard to know who dun what!

I've seen with my George the difference that switching to pellets from muesli can make. He's not a big drinker so his urine is concentrated. When he was younger it didn't seem to make any difference but now he's older and has one or two issues it does. He really loves that Gertie Guinea-pig muesli though so I do add odd bits to his pellet bowl for him to sniff out.

Your two might also have very different tastes... I've had pigs that loved/hated brassicas so you knew for sure who'd eat both portions of anything cabbage-y as the other wouldn't touch it. She loved the sweet peppers but cabbage-girl would only eat a nibble of those. Maybe the pet-shop was meaning that you shouldn't overdo 'salad veg' generally? I've heard too much watery stuff can give them squishy poops but it's not something I've seen myself. My vet is a bit tentative about celery triggering calcium deposits but a few slices once or twice a week don't seem to hurt George. Oreo sounds like a decent weight - I thought a kilo for a female was about right? Maybe it's just when she stands next to Caramel that she seems slender. Me and my sister have the same issue - but I won't say which way round!
 
Cucumber is fine daily, I never heard anywhere that cucumber is anything but a tasty watery daily veg. Not much nutrition but good for hydration and flushing the bladder. And daily peppers are excellent for vit C. We rotate leafy veggies through the week so it might be 2 days a little gem lettuce leaf, 2 days coriander, 2 days a small amount of higher calcium leaves like spinach, kale or parsley, and one day a mixed leaf salad bag- mine love the bistro salad mix that usually has chard, lambs lettuce and grated beetroot, as a treat. Kale shouldnt be a daily food, it is very high in calcium, but bear in mind that most of the calcium in the diet comes from the dry food pellets- I strictly limit pellets and never feed pellets on days when I feed calcium rich veggies...
 
PigglePuggle said:
Cucumber is fine daily, I never heard anywhere that cucumber is anything but a tasty watery daily veg. Not much nutrition but good for hydration and flushing the bladder. And daily peppers are excellent for vit C. We rotate leafy veggies through the week so it might be 2 days a little gem lettuce leaf, 2 days coriander, 2 days a small amount of higher calcium leaves like spinach, kale or parsley, and one day a mixed leaf salad bag- mine love the bistro salad mix that usually has chard, lambs lettuce and grated beetroot, as a treat. Kale shouldnt be a daily food, it is very high in calcium, but bear in mind that most of the calcium in the diet comes from the dry food pellets- I strictly limit pellets and never feed pellets on days when I feed calcium rich veggies...
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I bought them little gem lettuce today.. how often should I be giving them it?
 
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