Nutrition: Cavy Nutrition Charts Discussion Thread

[scarymonster742]

I am not sure how to ask this that is easy to understand, but I will try. If something is listed as occasionally, it can only be fed 1-2 times a week, so shoudl you only feed from the foods listed as "occasionally" 1-2 times a week, or something new from the "occasional" foods each day?

My piggies LOVE kale. They devour it like crazy!

[Ly&Pigs]

I understand what you are saying I think.

If it's under the A category, that means it can be fed every day even though it says almost daily.

If it's under the B category, it can be fed 2-4 times per week. Not everything in this B list should be fed 4 times per week. It it's really high in some things like calcium, vitamin A or oxalic acid, it's best limited to twice per week. An example is Parsley. High in oxalic acid and Vitamin A. Better to give only twice per week. On the other hand, cucumber could be fed every 2-3 days because it's low in oxalic acid and A but one of the reasons it's limited and isn't good for daily use is because of the high water content. I'd also completely avoid spinach as it's through the roof in oxalic acid and has a very high A content. Also very high in calcium. I do not feed spinach to any of my animals. If you want to feed it, then do so in very tiny portions. A couple baby leaves would do it.

If it's under the C category, it can be fed occasionally or 1-2 times per week.

If it's under the D category, it can be fed 1-2 times per month.

Now what you are asking (I think) is if you can feed several things from the C category during the week. Yes, but you need to rotate the veggies around and not feed them all on the same day. So if your pigs love Kale, they can have it 2 times per week. Say Monday and Thursday. Then on Tuesday and Friday, you could give kiwi one day and apple the other day for variety. Then on Wednesday and Saturday you could give mustard greens one of the days and a small broccoli floret the other day.

This way they aren't getting overinundated with too much calcium, oxalic acid, vitamin A, etc., but they are getting a good amount of C.

[scarymonster742]

Great, that perfectly answered my questions!

Why is spinach not in the "rarely" category if it is that bad?

Also, I know why to limit calcium, but why is A bad for them?

[scarymonster742]

I found the answer about A being bad for liver/kidneys.
Did not find an answer on the spinach, though.

Also, is it more important for them to eat their veggies or their pellets? Mine eat only about 1/2 of their pellets each day, but eat all the veggies, plus hay (I usually have to give more hay 2x a day). If the pellets are more important, I may have to limit the amount of time the veggies are in the cage.

[Ly&Pigs]

Pellets are the least part of their diet. They need at the minimum 1 cup of veggies per day each, primarily leafy greens.

In order it would be hay, veggies, water, pellets.

When formulating the charts I had to take all factors into consideration. This means sugar content, calcium, phosphorus, vitamin C, vitamin A and oxalic acid along with other nutrition data you don't see on the charts. Kale could have easily been put into the D category as well because of calcium and vitamin A. But other factors such as ca : ph ratio, low sugar and other stuff kept these items from being in the D category.

[scarymonster742]

Okay, thanks!

[deepelemgirl]

Originally Posted by Wheek Weak

I have one question about watermelon rind. Our four like the rind more than they like the red "meat" of the watermelon. This may be a stupid question, but does the rind contain less sugar and, therefore, can be given more often than once or twice a week? Our herd is willing to pay you a lot to say yes -they love it that much!

I was curious so I went and found this:
[SIZE=2]Watermelon rind was higher in percent fresh weight, dietary fiber, and potassium than the flesh. Total sugar content was lower in rind, and sugars were primarily fructose and glucose, compared to flesh, which had about 30% of its sugars as sucrose. Sugar content and type differed little across watermelon flesh colors.

Full article available: ARS | Publication request: COMPOSITION OF ORANGE, YELLOW, AND RED FLESHED WATERMELON


[/SIZE]

[deepelemgirl]

I love this list but there are some things I'd like clarification on, after reading through all the threads and not seeing it mentioned.

Tomatoes are listed as having more than 5 times the sugar content of cherry tomatoes. I know you said you took into account all the growing variations and so forth, but I still can't wrap my head around this piece of info. We nearly always buy roma tomatoes since they are typically cheapest and just offer small wedges maybe 4 times a week. Thoughts?

Yams and sweet potatoes - same thing to most people but drastically different amounts of sugar and vitamins. I'd love to feed these more often but for now am paranoid since I don't know how to determine the differences myself.

Thanks!

[jabberwock]

If you look very carefully at the charts then the sugar figure for tomatoes is per 100g while the figure for cherry tomatoes is per tomato so that accounts for the five fold difference you quote.

[Ly&Pigs]

I think jabberwock answered the tomato question very well. I feed roma's myself to my herd about 2-3 times per week. One small tomato covers all the pigs. They are less pulpy and contain more flesh. The tomato on the charts are an average for all types of regular tomatoes in 100 gram sizes. Cherry tomatoes are listed as singly served.

Yams and Sweet Potatoes are technically two entirely different tubers. Most of what grocers carry are sweet potatoes and not yams. Yams are typically in season in the fall I believe. If you aren't sure, ask your local grocer if they carry both.

[twozie]

Hi I am new here and I am just catching up ......pls redirect me to any new list but I wanted to compliment you on this list as I do not know much about GP's and hence the reason why I love this site.
Good work and thanks for posting all of this info it is really great!

[Ly&Pigs]

What do you mean "pls redirect me to any new list"? There is only one diet and nutrition charts thread here on this forum.

[twozie]

Ok since I read in the forum that you were working on a new list compilation I assumed by the dates that it may have already been done...thanks.

[Haley0489]

This chart is a LIFE SAVER! Thank you so much for it!

I've been giving them 1 or 2 half segments a day. So in a week it's only 3.5-7 segments. Is this too often?

[Ly&Pigs]

I've been giving them 1 or 2 half segments a day. So in a week it's only 3.5-7 segments. Is this too often?

Segments of what?

[Haley0489]

Ugh, my computer must have erased the top half of my post. Sorry! I was talking about orange segments

[Ly&Pigs]

Yes, too much and too often. Fruits should only be fed once or twice per week. At most they should get 1/2 to 1 small orange segment each.

[CF#5]

This is all very interesting to me, since I've been using the GL chart for over 3 years, and there are some significant differences. I'd like to know which one is more accurate, and why there are such drastic differences. For romaine lettuce, GL states 36mg Ca/45mg Ph, this chart states 33mg Ca/30mg Ph.

More significant, for leafy lettuce (no differentiation between red and green) GL states 68mg Ca/25mg Ph, this chart states 36mg Ca/29mg Ph for green.

Also, when dealing with peppers, neither chart has any information for orange peppers, but the GL chart lists the same number of calories for green, red, and yellow peppers. The only differences between colors, according to GL, is the vitamin C content. The calorie content is not exactly the same as sugar content, but since there's relatively little fat and protein in peppers, it can be assumed that most of the calories come from sugars or other carbohydrates. Therefore, the GL chart basically says all colors of peppers are pretty much the same, while this one makes huge distinctions between all the colors.

Overall, this chart seems more specific, but I'm not sure that means it's also more accurate. The oxalic acid content for escarole differs greatly, although the vitamin C content, Ca, and Ph values are the same. And there are also similarities for green leaf lettuce (such as vitamin C content) but the Ca and Ph values are different. There has to be a significant amount of accuracy, because a tremendous percentage of the various values for different vegetables match up, but there are enough discrepancies to cause concern. How do I know which one is more accurate?

[Ly&Pigs]

CF, all my data for the charts (except some of the info on oxalic acid) came from the USDA website. I am not sure if Lynx got her data from there as well but you can always ask her.

The USDA site has no info on orange peppers therefore I had no data for them for the charts.

I can't say which is most accurate, I can only say that my info came from the USDA. I'm trying to remember where all my data on oxalic acid came from, part of it is from the USDA site but I also used another site or two as well but can't remember where and I have lost the links over time and having to reformat my computer. I put these charts together a couple years ago.

[soccermama]

I wanted to say THANK YOU for this data chart! I'd printed it up a few weeks ago and keep it handy at my desk. But just today I copied the text to my own Excel file and then synced it to my Palm T|X for easy use at the grocery store & farmers' market (this coming summer.) Now I have it handy always. Color coded as your PDF file is, and broken up and sorted for ease of shopping. woohoo!

I'm thrilled to say that today Theo FINALLY ate some cilantro. He's not been too keen at all on "leafy greens", only nibbling some Romaine at the beginning. Today he tried some cilantro. So, I'll keep offering them (and serving up salads to my family for all the leftovers) but keep offering them on the idea that he might change his mind about something.

Anyway, again, a BIG THANK YOU!