Hello, I recently bought guinea pigs and I'm not sure of their age. My only concern of this is I don't want to feed alfalfa hay and things with extra calcium if they aren't babies but I also don't want to feed just timothy hay and adult pellets if they are babies. My question is, is there any way I can determine the age?
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need help determining age.
- Thread starter kamjay
- Start date
Regardless of your piggies actual age, if they are old enough to be away from their mum and to be sold, then they definitely can be fed a normal adult diet (even if they are youngsters) which is normal pellets (one tablespoon per day) and unlimited hay.
Its only newborn babies and pregnant sows who need a tiny bit of alfalfa anyway.
Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets
Its only newborn babies and pregnant sows who need a tiny bit of alfalfa anyway.
Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets
thank you so much!
Hi!
Once babies are weaned, they can live perfectly well on an adult diet; any additional needs are in fact minute and will be easily caught up in the 15 months it takes to reach adulthood and realise the genetically determined optimum weight and size. Please don't worry!
If you really want to, feed either 2 tablespoons of pellets a day until your babies have passed 400g (but please not past 600g) or offer 1 handful of alfalfa additionally, but not both. That would be overkill because a good general diet actually already covers most of the extra needs to a good extent already. In nearly 15 years on here, we have frankly seen no difference in surprise babies from piggies in good care to those where the pregnancy was known and the same is also going for any babies on a normal good grass hay based diet to those on supplements.
Apart from our very detailed and comprehensive diet guide, which looks at all food groups in detail but also as an integral part of a whole, you may find our weight monitoring guide helpful for the weekly health check. We teach you how you can work out whether your little ones are a good weight for their actual size at any age (since there is a huge natural variance) and then once you know the ball park and how weight changes throughout a life span learn to check for any unusual changes, so you can catch developing health issues early on.
These guides here form part of our strongly recommended weekly life long health monitoring regime. Normal kitchen will do.
Weight - Monitoring and Management
Guinea pig body quirks - What is normal and what not?
Boar Care: Bits, Bums & Baths
How To Pick Up And Weigh Your Guinea Pig Safely
Early Signs Of Illness
New guinea pigs: Sexing, vet checks&customer rights, URI, ringworm and parasites
All the information links in this thread are part of our very useful comprehensive new owners guide collection, which addresses specifically all the areas that we get the most questions and concerns about.
PS: My own surprise babies never got any extras and still lived a perfectly happy, healthy and long live, getting compliments from the vet about their health and weight. The little baby on the left, Tegan, lived to shortly before her 8th birthday, and her two adopted playmates from a bad situation both lived to celebrate their 8th birthday. They all passed away last summer within 3 months of each other.
PS2: It would help us enormously to help you best if you please added your country, state/province, world city or UK county to location in your account details (access by clicking on your username on the top bar), so we can take in your general background, climate, access to vets/piggy savvy vets and rescues, medical brands available in your country etc. into account with just a quick glance to the left. We have members and enquiries from all over the world and very different conditions. This saves both parties time and allows us to tailor any advice to what is relevant to you straight away instead of keeping it general. Thank you!