minimun amount of nuggets which can be fed?

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ellie_jo3213

ellie_jo3213

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Ive been having a bit of trouble recently with over growing teeth, and piggy eating nuggets over hay - which isn't doing much good for keeping teeth ground down! So i'm cutting back her nugget rations to force her to eat the hay! I'm trying out the tough love approach!
So I'm using P@H, how much is the minimum amount i can feed a day? if i cut down so i need to supplement with anything else?
 
This is my opinion, I have no experience with Dental Pigs and suggest you post in the Health and Illness to get the experienced Dental Pigs owners View's on this as they might not see it in the food section.

With your pig not eating or not eating enough. You will have to keep her strong and if she isn't able to eat hay and veg she won't be getting what she needs and she will more than likely start losing weight, which is not good especially if she needs dental work and she has to have a GA (I'm sure your aware if you find the right person this can be done without).

Pellets have Vitamins that pigs need, aslong as the pig is getting a balanced diet with all the vitamins pellets are not essential.
 
I don't think there's a minimum... unless your pig is underweight, nursing or very young. Mine don't get any really, well, apart from a tablespoon or so between them per week as a treat. It's common in Sweden not to feed dry food, just veggies and hay.
 
flintstones said:
This is my opinion, I have no experience with Dental Pigs and suggest you post in the Health and Illness to get the experienced Dental Pigs owners View's on this as they might not see it in the food section.

With your pig not eating or not eating enough. You will have to keep her strong and if she isn't able to eat hay and veg she won't be getting what she needs and she will more than likely start losing weight, which is not good especially if she needs dental work and she has to have a GA (I'm sure your aware if you find the right person this can be done without).

Pellets have Vitamins that pigs need, aslong as the pig is getting a balanced diet with all the vitamins pellets are not essential.
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shes had to have 2 dentals in the past 2 months with GA, my plan was to get her eating more hay to try wear down the teeth more to get her to go longer between GA's. theres no one down my way that does dental's with out GAs. am weighing her every few days, and she seems to be stable around 900g atm. she gets roughly about 1/4 handful of nuggets everynight. but she'll eat them in like 10 mins and want more. if she could she'd eat them all day but they do nothing for wearing teeth down.
shall ask in health and illness.

thanks
 
ellie_jo3213 said:
shes had to have 2 dentals in the past 2 months with GA, my plan was to get her eating more hay to try wear down the teeth more to get her to go longer between GA's. theres no one down my way that does dental's with out GAs. am weighing her every few days, and she seems to be stable around 900g atm. she gets roughly about 1/4 handful of nuggets everynight. but she'll eat them in like 10 mins and want more. if she could she'd eat them all day but they do nothing for wearing teeth down.
shall ask in health and illness.

thanks
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I understand what you mean, I just don't know if it would work. I suppose if she wasn't eating anything you could give the pellets back.
 
ok there is a vet this way that does do dentals without GA (being north bristol) not me i hasten to add! will need to get the details from someone else but pm me if i forget as not at my best this late in the evening! my piggy i thought had dental issues and actually had oral fungal - just a thought
 
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would also say now i give a better brand of pellets i give less than i did of bog standard ones as they were pilling on the pounds! the quality of hay is a big factor i find in how much a piggy will choose to eat - competition also increase hay eating fervour
 
home at the moment is west wales, until uni starts again in october, then i'll be down congrsbury/langford way. where abouts is the vet in north brizzle?
i switched her to excel oregano and blackcurrent a month or two before she started getting teeth problems. i think she liked them too much and ate only them instead of hay. ive switched her back to P@H nuggets which was what she was on for the 2 years previous. dont know if the switch of food started or caused the teeth problems, but thought better put her back on the old stuff just in case. but i think the damage has already been done and the teeth roots have moved. :(

but yeh the info on the vet in Bristol would be great. :D
 
Between 30g and 50g is the amount so if you are worried 30g is the lowest i would go, if she isn't eating hay i would honestly say to try different hay, they usually find one they love but some pigs just dont like some food similar to people and what they like and dislike.

I had this issue with my piggies and did think about cutting pellets down but i thought really hard about what it was like as a child being forced to eat something i hated and i backed out lol.
As it turns out my pigs didnt like the cheap hay i had at the time, oxbow hay is great especially if you dont have to many, the hay experts is another website you can visit x
 
All mine choose hay over their dry food, I had to switch from my usual brand because I refuse to buy from the pet shop I used to get it from anymore. I'm waiting for my mum to get her bales in for the horses, then I'll just go and rob them.

The new hay is in a smaller package and cheaper and every bit is getting eaten. It's gorgeous, long thin green strands, the piggies get so excited now when they see me going to the hay shed. The only problem is that I used to go through a bag a week of the old hay, now I'm up to 2 bags of the new, but I suppose their dry food will last a bit longer.

I can't remember what it's called though, it's in a clear vac pac type bag with green writing on it. I'll look it up when I get home from work.
 
You do not need to give any pellets at all - with a balanced veg diet and good quality hay, pellets are not strictly necessary and usually not fed on the continent (obviously without any detriment to the guinea pigs, as many live to a healthy old age!)

But you may look out for some good quality hay to entice her to eat more hay - perhaps she doesn't like what you give her?
 
I would suggest feeding the guinea pig its pellets like normally during the day and then just remove the bowl of pellets before going to bed and give it back in the morning.
That way it has about 8hours without pellets? and hopefully it will eat the hay then instead.
Maybe try switching to a different type of pellets too? My guy are on Supa Burgess Excel which is great for thier teeth, it is big so they really got to chew on it and wears thier teeth down good.
What type of hay are you using? Try getting a new type and mixing it in with the old. Hopefully that could help. He may just need a change.

If you dont want to take the food bowl away at night you could give 15g of pellets in the morning and give 15g of pellets in the night time. Between 30-50 is what the experts reccomend.
 
ah thanks for the replies

KingBoris&HisFollowers: ive been looking at the hay experts, theres so many to choose from! theres so many diff types, deciding which one is impossible! plus quite a few are very pricey if it turns out she doesnt like them :S

Wiebke: yes ive read a few places that pellets dont need to be given, but.. she only likes carrots, cucumber, baby corn and sometimes melon. nothing else. ive tried so many different veg and fruit but she sniffs it and runs away usually. its a huge no to : tomatoes, cauliflower leaves, strawberries, pepper, parsley, spinach, broccoli, lettuce, apples, banana, pears, pineapple, celery, Brussels Sprouts and Grapes. so the food shes actually eating has no goodness really, just water! she'll eat grass, but is going off dandelions.
ive got 4 types of hay in atm: p@h stuff for bedding, excel dandelion and marigold, Woodlands Chamomile Harvest Hay (which looks and smells really nice!) and some dandelion and green oat dried thing from Wilkinsons. out of those its the wilkinsons stuff she likes most, but its only supposed to be given as a treat!

michellexgix:
Burgess Excel blackcurrent and oregano is what I started feeding her before her teeth went. before that she was on P@H nuggets for 2years and she was fine. it just started when i put her onto the excel nuggets. i think she liked them more than the hay, and i just kept filling her empty bowl with them. she was getting through about 2-3 handfuls each day. i have spoken to my vets and an exotic specialist, who informed me that they are nutritionally the best food about, but do not wear down the teeth. they do absolutely nothing. try adding a tiny bit of water (mimicking saliva) and they turn to mush!

so i'm concentrating on getting her to eat long fiber more than anything, but shes just so fussy! I'm at a complete loss!
 
oh forgot to add that although shes not keen on veg hay and fruit, she loves eating newspaper, wire cables, carpet, doorframes, wooden sideboards and plastic. when shes out for a run in the night i have to watch her so carefully to make sure she doesnt get hold of anything! even put out a cardboard lid with grass, veg and hay in it, and its gets ignored, she goes after the other stuff! talk about an odd guinea pig!
 
ellie_jo3213 said:
ah thanks for the replies
ive been looking at the hay experts, theres so many to choose from! theres so many diff types, deciding which one is impossible! plus quite a few are very pricey if it turns out she doesnt like them :S
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The hay experts sell tester packs with 6 types of hay/grass:

https://www.thehayexperts.co.uk/Hay...+Herbs.36/Taster+Selection+Sample+Pack.6.html

might be worth a try for your fussy piggy - they're quite cheap compared to buying a full sized bag of each (£3.99).
 
michellexgix:
Burgess Excel blackcurrent and oregano is what I started feeding her before her teeth went. before that she was on P@H nuggets for 2years and she was fine. it just started when i put her onto the excel nuggets. i think she liked them more than the hay, and i just kept filling her empty bowl with them. she was getting through about 2-3 handfuls each day. i have spoken to my vets and an exotic specialist, who informed me that they are nutritionally the best food about, but do not wear down the teeth. they do absolutely nothing. try adding a tiny bit of water (mimicking saliva) and they turn to mush!

so i'm concentrating on getting her to eat long fiber more than anything, but shes just so fussy! I'm at a complete loss![/QUOTE]

Thanks alot for that info there. My guy is just fed the normal Burgess excel, not the blackcurrent and oregano mix. I got a free sample of the black current and oregano and mixed it in with his normal and he loves it. My guy still eats his hay with his. I just thought with them being bigger nuggets that it will wear down the teeth, I must add a bit of water and see whats it like.
Why not just either do a change over on to new food so or else you could just give the mimimum amount of food with a selection of hay :)
 
the vets is the one in winterbourne that will do teeth without GA, although i have been informed he can be a bit abrupt....... never seen him myself as i trek my crew back to cambridge unless it is an absolute emergency
 
lovelygirl said:
the vets is the one in winterbourne that will do teeth without GA, although i have been informed he can be a bit abrupt....... never seen him myself as i trek my crew back to cambridge unless it is an absolute emergency
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ah thanks! will keep that one in mind when i go back to uni now.
just bought the 6 hay samples from the Hay Experts - hopefully she might like one of them!
shes still eating at the moment! (touch wood), shes been on lawn mowing duty this afternoon! hope its dry tomorrow so she can go back out.
 
6 samples of hay arrived on the weekend. shes sniffed them all, and eaten none! havent been able to catch her to put her out on the lawn today, and she'd still rather eat pellets than fresh food and hay. had a break through with courgette! also corn of the cob with the husk still on is in Morrisons for 40p, so shes been happily ripping that to shreds but now has slight diarrhoea -so ive put probiotics in the water. think she'd still rather eat carpet and plastic, and shes taken a shine to biting my feet recently..... :{
 
Will she eat dandelion leaves if you have any? If she'll eat grass, I'd pick some grass and rip up some lettuce and maybe some herbs and mix them all up together. I think lettuce is often a favourite so she might be able to be tricked into liking it. :)
 
Could you try mixing some hay in with the bowl of nuggets. Maybe mostly hay with a few nuggets inside, well mixed up. That way she would possibly eat the hay while trying to get to the nuggets.
No idea if this would work, I'm very much a guinea pig newbie, but I know when I picked my boys up from the rescue, the owners mixed all their feed in with hay, and my guys just gobbled the whole lot up. When I was introducing them to the nuggets they now feed on I continued to do this for for a while.
They now have hay in a rack and nuggets and veg separately, but they tend to go for veg then hay then nuggets in that order.
 
alpine meadow hay seems to be a hit! she ate some while she was pottering around the house tonight, and even ignored sweetcorn to eat the hay! I'm so happy! we might be getting somewhere now!
 
OH MY GOD! shes got expensive taste! 3kg of alpine meadow hay is £18!! maybe i might make the sample bag last a bit longer......
 
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