What I feed my Guinea pigs- good or bad?

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Piggieslave

Piggieslave

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Hi!

I'm a fairly new guinea pig owner, and I've been getting really confused about what to feed my guinea pigs in terms of veggies. Some people tell me to feed lots of leafy greens, some people tell me not too. And so on.

This is what I feed my guineas currently (I have two, female babies):

-3 leaves of Dandelion greens (from my supermarket)
-1 large leaf of Kale
-4 small pieces of cucumber (1 inch)
-4 small pieces of carrot (1inch)
-3 small pieces of yellow/red pepper (my guinea pigs least favourite foodgrrrr)
-4 sprigs of parsley
-A small handful of grass (grow it in the house)

-Water
-Timothy hay
-Cavy Performance from Oxbow

Sometimes I switch it up every little bit in terms of veggies (ocassionly I give romaine lettuce too, but I don't always have it), but that's the basic idea.

Please tell me if this works!

Thanks -c
 
Those all sound really good. (:
If you want you can google acceptable vedgetables/foods for guinea pigs, and you can find lists of all the safe and unsafe foods for your piggy/ies.
 
Only thing I will say about you list is that dandelion is a diuretic, so if you don't want them to pee a lot or drink tons I'd cut that back a bit :)
 
Sounds good to me. They can also have things like broccoli (sp?) and cabbage, both in moderation, also celery etc. Misty is currently eating corn on the cob, husk and all.

Fruit in moderation - strawberries, melon, raspberries etc - apples and oranges in moderation as they can cause sores on mouth.

Have a look at http://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=42 as this was written by much more experienced members than me.

And enjoy your girls - pigtures please! :))
 
Thanks for the replies! One question... can you buy just salad mix in a store and feed it to them (no iceburg!) Would this be a good replacement for dandelion greens? Pity I can't feed it to them! They LOVE dandelion! :p
 
I buy salad mix leaves in store for Misty. She also loves the living salads you can buy - I pop one into her cage for tea and she soon reduces it to just soil! Sounds like a good replacement to me, although most leaves are not high in vit c - but then you are also feeding stuff like pepper which is.
 
Dandelion, kale and spinach are all high in calcium and should not be fed daily. Try to substitute kale with sweetheart cabbage, savoy cabbage, spring greens or cauli leaves.

Here is a list of what else they can have; try to include one high vitamin C veg every day: 1 slice of pepper of any colour, broccoli, fresh coriander,
parsley, dill or fennel.
http://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=42
http://www.guinealynx.info/diet.html

The more veg you try to introduce at the beginning, the better - it is much more difficult to get piggies to change their diet later. A limited diet can cause problems if you can't get hold of the specific veg at some point or other (time of the day, trouble with supply, weather, holidays, strikes etc.). The trick of a good piggy diet is trying to give as wide a range of veg as you can afford, to vary (many veg are better given only every 2-3 days, like carrots, tomatos, lettuces, fruit, broccoli, green beans, sweetcorn etc.) and to give everything in moderation as part of a mix of veg.

Do not introduce more than one veg at a time and repeat later on if it doesn't get accepted the first time round. usually, persistence pays off.

PS: You can always try to grow fresh herbs in a windowsill box yourself, especially over winter. Sewing bird food seed in an outdoors tray will give you some fresh green to nibble on before the grass is growing again.
 
Hi,
Today I got a salad mix called "Fresh Herb Salad" by Earthbound Farm for my piggies. Looks pretty good, but here's the ingredients:

Organic baby lettuces (Red and Green Romaine, Red and Green Oak Leaf, Red Leaf, Lollo Rosa, Tango) Organic Red and Green Chard, Organic Mizuana, Organic Arugula, Organic Mache, Organic Frisee, Organic Radicchio, Organic Parsley, Organic Dill, Organic Cilantro

So far, the pigs LOVE it. First thing they eat in a bowl of cucumber and carrots! :p
 
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