onion knife

Fluffy17

Fluffy17

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My dad was cooking and was cutting onions, he also cut some bellpepper after that. Is it safe to give some to my guinea pig even tho the knife and cutting board previously touched the onions? Thanks
 
Fluffy17 said:
My dad was cooking and was cutting onions, he also cut some bellpepper after that. Is it safe to give some to my guinea pig even tho the knife and cutting board previously touched the onions? Thanks
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Hi

Yes, it is safe. They may not quite like the flavour.

Onion as a bulb plant is one of the things that should just not be part of a regular diet but it is not so highly toxic that a one-off is a problem.
 
Thank you ❤️
Wiebke said:
Hi

Yes, it is safe. They may not quite like the flavour.

Onion as a bulb plant is one of the things that should just not be part of a regular diet but it is not so highly toxic that a one-off is a problem.
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The two real and most common food killers in only small amounts are fresh dog pee and foxglove - the latter unfortuntely doesn't taste bad to guinea pigs so they have a tendency to make a beeline for it. Both of these count as life or death emergencies since the poison has to pass through the system. Rodents don't have a vomit reflex.

Any members of the buttercup family are poisonours as well but not in just a very small quantity. I've spent my first years of piggy keeping patiently picking any creeping buttercup patches off my lawn each spring until I had them eradicated and am keeping a close eye out for self-seeded buttercups in my borders. But if they eat just a little it is not going to kill them.
Any moss is also not good but at least that doesn't taste nice to piggies and they tend to ignore it.

Any bulb plants are also a strict no no as well - but again, most are not so toxic that just a little will do major damage. Onions are falling into that category but they are at the more harmless end and won't be a piggy's first choice, anyway.

Please keep any house plants well away (including not where a pot could fall within reach of piggies). They are generally not poisonous in smaller quantities but it always makes for an anxious day or two. Plus gas poisoning from faulty heating. Please make sure that your gas alarm is working because guinea pigs tolerate a lot less than humans.

You can find a list of foods to avoid at the end of this guide here which ranges from merely unsuitable to acutely toxic.
What this list doesn't do is rate how often each of them should be fed - there are other considerations like calcium, oxalates, nitrates; sugar/starch and fruit acid etc. that are also coming into play for a long term balanced diet. You can find it stickied to the top of the food section.
 
My garden was full of foxgloves last year, at least the bees got to enjoy them!

I'm also paranoid about the knife thing - so I use a different, separate knife. Because I know me and I would otherwise forget.
 
Lorcan said:
My garden was full of foxgloves last year, at least the bees got to enjoy them!

I'm also paranoid about the knife thing - so I use a different, separate knife. Because I know me and I would otherwise forget.
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I also have my separate piggy knife and chopping board... With strict orders to hub not to ever touch either if he values his life. :D
 
Wiebke said:
I also have my separate piggy knife and chopping board... With strict order to hub not to ever touch either if he values his life. :D
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Same. Ahaha I'm glad I'm not the only one, there's been more than a few arguments about cutting chicken with the "wrong" knife (it was not, lol) and why didn't I use that knife? What do you mean it's the guinea pig knife? And what about using this chopping board?

I almost threw him out of the kitchen, lol.
 
Lorcan said:
Same. Ahaha I'm glad I'm not the only one, there's been more than a few arguments about cutting chicken with the "wrong" knife (it was not, lol) and why didn't I use that knife? What do you mean it's the guinea pig knife? And what about using this chopping board?

I almost threw him out of the kitchen, lol.
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Hub has the other side of the hob for human prepping (and so have I for anything that is not fit to feed to piggies)... The 'His and Hers' approach seems to work.

But we still have ongoing discussions about him using my favourite cooking preps knife on the days I am cooking and then taking offence when I am hiding it away ahead of time! :D
 
We use the same knives and cutting boards for everything and just wash them in between. Well, all but my best Miyabi utility knife that I use for filleting fish and other things that need an extremely sharp knife; that lives in its case in a drawer so that it stays that sharp without me having to sharpen it. (Because I'm lazy and knife sharpening is messy, so I don't want to do it often ... though I need to get out my whet stone and sharpen the rest of the knives ... bleh.)

We do use non-porous cutting boards, so washing pretty much removes anything that could be on them. (Ours are made by Epicurean, but many companies make the non-porous wood fibre cutting boards now.)
 
I always dishwash anything that I use to cut/store guinea pig veggies separate from everything else, because I'm afraid of cross-contamination where something I eat that's fatal for guinea pigs ends up on the guinea pig stuff in quantities too small to see. I'm probably just being paranoid, but I don't exactly know the LD50 for guinea pigs of all human food I eat to prove it would be visible.

Veggies are a more known quantity though. A tiny bit of onion is fine.
 
My knives and cutting boards get hand washed for their own longevity, but my theory is that washing (hand washing or dishwashing) is removing the cross-contamination risk, or I haven't washed it adequately and should do so again. I mean, I'm not going to kasher them (I don't keep kosher, but the kashrut is about the strictest set cross-contamination rules I can think of), but I do follow general food safety guidelines, such as those laid out here: USDA/FSIS Cutting Board Guidelines*, though I completely disregard the nonsense about marble, glass, and pyroceramic cutting boards ... those are not cutting boards; they are pastry boards or serving boards and will dull knives horribly. (We do have a tempered glass "cutting board"; its primary function is as giant trivet. We get out a wood-composite cutting board to set on top of it if we want to cut something.) I don't generally feel the need to use the bleach solution referenced on a regular basis, and this step would be redundant on things going through a dishwasher, as most dishwashing powders contain bleach.

*I'm sure the UK has an equivalent set of guidelines, but I didn't bother looking for them because food safety isn't really location dependent.
 
While preparing dinner yesterday I actually realised that we have unconsciously reserved one particular knife for the piggy prep! Chopping boards get wiped and sanitised after every use anyway as I used to be a chef.
 
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