Piggies with enough vegetables and biting piggy

[wuvhandles]

Hi, I have 2 questions,
I'm supposed to give a cup of veggies per piggy right?
I think I'm giving them their daily requirement for vegetables. In the morning, I give them a sald in small bowl made up of 3-4 huge leaves of butterluttuce, and a peice of carrot and/or apple, then at night I take 1 cellery stick and break it into 4 peices for them.
This sounds about right for 2 piggies hey?
Plus they get all the pellets they need and all the hay they need too.

Also, Mr. Hyde loves laptime! But it seems everytime I pick him up to put him back in the cage he starts biting me suuuuper hard and making me bleed. Is there anyway to condition him not to do this (without being mean of couse). This is in contrast to his brother, who also likes laptime, but not for more than a few minutes (then he gets anxious and likes to run around hte couch or pretend i'm a mountain and scale me )
thanks!

[nonamian_girl]

That sounds alright but you need to feed celery every other day and apples only 2-3 times a week. Check out the "misconceptions about guinea pigs" thread to see what other stuff you could feed.

Sounds like Mr. Hyde just gets scared when you're trying to put him back, maybe just figure out what he doesn't like and try to not do it? Also, check out the biting page on CavySpirit.com .

[muffin]

Mine have started to do this too. I think they are afraid of not being on a solid surface, which is understandable. Most guinea pigs are afraid of being in the air. Try not to let him see that he is airborne. They are only 10 weeks old though, and too small and wriggly to be wrapped in a towel for the 'return flight', so I don't know what to do either. I'm just trying to make it as little as possible time that they spend in the air, keeping my fingers out of the way, and hopefully they will learn eventually that we won't drop them. In the meantime I may need to start wearing gardening gloves, but I don't want to.

[phantac]

I would vary your veggies. You need to add romaine, ridichio, red leaf, etc. I buy already mixed spring mix, since this has all the differenct greens. I serve a large handful in the morning. At night I give my 2 piggies, 4 leaves of ridichio, 4 leaves of endive, 2 leaves of romaine, 2 leaves of another. I add 2 slices of pepper, and sometimes I add a piece of fruit.

Pepper is important since it is a great source of vitamin c. I tend to give my piggies more rather than less since they do eat their veggies and love it.

Also, about nipping you. My piggy had never nipped me now going on 1 - 1/2 years until a few weeks ago when i was putting her back into the cage. She got scared and nipped me. Now whenever I put her back I have her wrapped in a towel so she feels secure. Make sure you never put your piggy back where you are holding her in your hands and you extend your arms out over the cage. This frightens them terribly. Try wrapping her up.

[wuvhandles]

I should mention that my hyde never bites me when I take him out of the cage, and that is the real scary part because I have to bend over and usually stretch to get him (if he's at the far end) bring him close to me. After I pet him though, If i don't wrap himup, he starts biting me when Igo to put him back in teh cage ( i have about 5 marks where he made me bleed :-p ) so I started wrappig him up in the t-shirt I pet him on, and when I wrap him up and lift him to put him back, he starts biting the t-shirt :-S

[Catnippe]

Question while reading this thread, even though it's slightly off topic.

I've read that you need to give them celery in really little pieces, to avoid problems with the strings, but how small is small enough? My Yoda eats best when I give him things whole or halved, at the most. He loves radishes, but only if I give him the entire thing and don't cut it. So, with celery, do I have to chop it or is breaking it into sections ok?

[muffin]

I'm not sure how small is small enough with celery, but I think radishes should be restricted to occasional treats. Just in case you didn't know The strings in celery can cause problems in the pig's gut/stomach, so I chop it into little bits, about 1/2 a centimetre. That way it's small enough that it can't possibly cause any trouble!