Diet: Newbie questions on pellets and veggies

[Cogni]

Hi all,
I have had my piggies now for a day and a half. It is an adventure! I still don't have everything set up for their maximal comfort and my convenience but I'm getting there. So far it is a delight--they are lovely and no major adjustment problems (yet anyway!).

I have a few questions though:

I just ordered pellets but they will take some days to arrive. I have been feeding them heaps of hay and veggies. Would the lack of pellets for a week or so be damaging to them? I have the pellet food that was given to me by the young girl who had the piggies and gave them away on Craig's list. They look like pet store pellets, with little colored cracker-like things in them. I have not given them these as I wanted to get them off those pellets and get good quality food from one of those places you all send away to. But I will give them some pellets if they are lacking essential things. I was thinking I could take out the colored bits. I notice the piggie I take care of downstairs (when her people go away) gets pellets like that and digs through her dispenser to get the colored bits. They must be the equivalent of cookies for children.

I'm giving them heaps of hay. They love it--but keep peeing on it in their nesting basket!

The veggies I have given them in order of quantity are:
1. Romaine lettuce. They like it a lot. The girl seems to have mainly fed them on romaine and parsley.

2. Spinach. They loved the baby leaves which is all I had to start (from my own salad fixings). I got some regular spinach which has much bigger, greener, and tougher leaves, and they don't like it as much but they eat it.

3. Celery cut up small. They like the leaves a lot but tend to leave the celery segments for a while but in the morning they are gone.

3. Parsley. They like it a lot. I have just given them a few sprigs as treats.

4. Carrots. I cut up a carrot small for the two of them. At first they seemed to have trouble eating it. I think they only had tender veggies before. But I left it last night and this morning it was gone. Surprising to me that they did not eat it immediately; the piggie downstairs is fed a whole carrot daily which she picks up and drags off to her igloo delightedly. She munches through every bit of it with no trouble.

5. Green pepper. I tried it for the first time last night. This morning it is still there. I guess I'll try the red bell pepper next and hope they find it sweeter and better.

6. A few green beans. I tried them this morning for the first time. They sniffed and went away.

7. A bit of apple core without the seeds. They liked it. I'm thinking it will be an occasional treat.

With this variety--can they wait on the pellets or should I give them the pet store pellets this week?

Any suggestions for other veggies that will give them what they need?
Thanks!

[JD In Van]

Personally I would rather feed no pellets then bad pellets but can you check out a local feed store and find out if you can get a small quantity of something suitable to get you through the week?

1. Romaine lettuce is good but you need to rotate leafy green so they don't eat only romaine. Alternate between this, green leaf and cilantro to start.

2. Spinach is not so good. It should be fed once a week at most.

3. Celery is fine but don't over feed it (I believe it's a 4-5 times a week food).

4. Parsley's good as a treat, if they're under 6 months old parlsey's also a good source of calcium if you're not feeding them alfalfa. Keep it occational in older pigs too much calcium is bad for them.

5. Carrots need to be limited to maximum one BABY carrot a day. They're very high in sugar and other things that are bad for piggies and don't have a lot of good nutricion in them. They should be treated as a treat not a daily food.

6. Peppers are VITAL to their diet they need them as a source of Vit C. If they won't eat pepper you need to stop feeding them everything but leafy greens (cilantro, romaine, green leaf) and the peppers till they will eat them. Red pepper is as you said very sweet they can't eat it daily. It may be a good way to get them started on it but you'll have to get them eatting all types of pepper shortly.

7. My pigs LOVE apple. Be careful though it's very very sweet they shouldn't get more then 1/8 of an apple each no more then once or twice a week.

Check out the menus at the top of the diet section they'll give you some ideas as to what else they can eat but first it's vital to their health that you get them eatting a variety of greens and peppers. Everything else can wait until then.

[azalea]

Howdy neighbor! My cavies came with the colorful mix pellet food also. I was in the same situation with the waiting on shipping. I opted to comb through the food to save only the pellet bits. The seeds, nuts, bolts, pinwheels, X and O bits and the like went to the compost pile.

When the new pellets arrived I mixed 75% old, 25% new for a couple day, then 50/50 and so on. I use a measure to "dose" out the pellets each morning, no more, no less.

With the vegies they get the green pepper and green leafy bits every meal but I try to mix up the other vegies to avoid meal time boredom. I did print out the pdf food chart but B & P can't read and don't care which ones should only be once or twice a week. They fling the leafy bits and dive into the treasure on the bottom.

I try the new stuff several times, they ate okra, turnip greens, turnip root slivers, asparagus the first time then not the next. They would have to be picky about stuff I still have growing in the garden (read "free"). I just offer and what ever is left at the next meal I clean up and put in the compost pile.

B&P seem to enjoy twinkling under the hay rack. Okay by me, easy to clean but a bit wasteful on the hay. I took to loading empty family size tissue boxes (Kleenex) with the timothy and placed the box near hay rack land. This seems to work for us, they don't drag as much hay out at one time but still twinkle under the rack, the bazillion doots a day still go every where.

I was going to make a snarkie comment about a certain brand of pellet but you may live in Katy and I wouldn't want to offend.

[Cogni]

Hello Gulf coast neighbor! Thanks to you and to JD for feedback! (Feedback--hmm, that sounds like a piggie concept. If they don't eat it the first time, feed it back later!)

I was concentrating so much on other issues that I didn't read the veggie info carefully, but this week I'll do that, and see how much my piggies will let me get away with feeding them a perfectly healthy and balanced diet!!

Brazoria Co. is south of here, out Lack Jackson way I believe--what is your town?
I live almost smack in the middle of the loop, or slightly southwest, between Hermann Park and the Rice Village. Would be fun to have a piggy picnic wouldn't it? Only mine do not let me pick them up yet.

[lissie]

Originally Posted by azalea

When the new pellets arrived I mixed 75% old, 25% new for a couple day, then 50/50 and so on. I use a measure to "dose" out the pellets each morning, no more, no less.

It is better to switch them cold turkey. Bad pellets will do no good for them. If you mix it, they'll jut pick out only the bad ones that they like.

Originally Posted by azalea

I did print out the pdf food chart but B & P can't read and don't care which ones should only be once or twice a week. They fling the leafy bits and dive into the treasure on the bottom.

I hope that's a joke. Your pigs won't follow the food chart, it's you who have to prepare a balanced diet for them.

[Cogni]

By the way, I am really impressed with all the info on this site! So many informative pages and threads. If I had aimed to read it all before getting piggies it would probably take me another 3 months to get through it. That is WITHOUT piggies to take care of. Oh they are such fluffy little prince charmings, and who wants to be on the computer when you could be watching them? I don't need to watch piggies on YouTube anymore!
I'll absorb the needed info from the existing pages as I can. Your msgs really helped me with the basics.

[Dichotomy83]

Imagine your pigs as picky toddlers. LOL. you really have to be persistent with the feeding to eventually get them to try new things. I agree with most of whats been said. Rotate your leafy greens so they dont get stuck on (or bored of, too!) one thing. Romaine is one of my boys absolute favorites, but it gets rotated with butter lettuce, kale, dandelion greens (another fave of theirs), cilantro, radicchio, etc. Offer them lettuce and green pepper daily. Mine refused to even tough the green pepper for the first week or so. You can also try cutting it differently. When the boys finally tried the green pepper they would only eat the diced pieces, not the strips.

I would personally wait until they are eating leafy greens and green pepper routinely before adding more veggies. Dont want to overwhelm them!

[JD In Van]

Originally Posted by Dichotomy83

. You can also try cutting it differently. When the boys finally tried the green pepper they would only eat the diced pieces, not the strips.

That's funny my boys like big chunks of things best. If I cut anything too small it gets over looked completely. Ideally for them I would just dump everything whole in a big pile they could root through!

[azalea]

Just to clarify, I choose to only give 1/8 cup of pellets per pig each day. They rarely leave even one lone pellet in the bowl, "bad" pellet or "good".

And yes, I made a joke about B&P not reading the chart. It's true, my fuzzy friends are totally illiterate. And I made a joke about it. I know it's sad but the last adult to take me serious was the 911 lady when the pickup truck parked in the front room.

Sorry, Lissie, my rather terse sense of humor is often lost in translation over the inter-web. As when I mention I live in the Greater Pearland, Friendswood, Alvin, Manvel triangle. Haha, I listed 4 cities, triangles just have the 3 sides...

[Ly&Pigs]

1. You need a variety of lettuces, not just romaine. Add more types of lettuces into their diet.

2. Spinach is not a good choice to feed in my opinion. It's through the roof in Vitamin A which can cause liver/kidney problems and very high in oxalic acid. It's better left entirely out of the diet but if you insist on feeding it, limit it to tiny portions only once or twice a week.

3. Celery is fine but not more than 3-4 times a week. Every other day at most.

4. Ditto to what JD said.

5. Pigs can often take days to weeks to eat new things. Don't try different colors yet. Stick with green for now, offer it a few times a day in small amounts. Once they start eating it then you can try other colors. Remember, the more colorful, the higher the sugar content. Red is best fed in a rotation with other colors as it contains the most sugars.

6. No more than 1-2 green beans per pig 2-3 times a week.

Try cilantro. It's a good everyday veggie and you can feed a nice amount of it. Kiwi would be a good choice for a once weekly fruit as it's great for C. Kale is also nice in small amounts a couple times a week as it's also high in C. Much better than spinach.

[1frankie7]

[quote=Dichotomy83;454393] You can also try cutting it differently. When the boys finally tried the green pepper they would only eat the diced pieces, not the strips.quote]



Haha this is what I had to do my piggie wouldent eat green pepper or really any pepper untill I diced it!

[Cogni]

I found out today my piggies' pellets won't arrive till Thursday, even though they are coming FedEx.

The poor piggies have been without pellets since last Saturday when I got them. I did not feed them the 'junk pellets' from the previous owner.
I have been feeding them lots of veggies, since last week in accordance with Ly's and others' advice on my last post. No more spinach; several different nutritious lettuces in rotation (they eat all of them now); cilantro (didn't accept until a couple days ago), 1/8 green pepper every night, which is still mostly left behind in the morning; parsley most days; a bit of apple as treats; cucumber (they like the expensive English cucumber but reject the American); and small amounts of other vegetables, trying to find which they'll accept. (fennel: ate fronds today for the first time; calabazito squash, rejected; green beans, rejected; sweet potato, gnawed at it a bit but then left it; kiwi fruit, rejected).

I'm on my second big bag of hay and they get fresh double handfuls many times a day and a big heap at night.

They are not drinking from the bottle. Bottle mechanism works ok as far as I can see, and they've sniffed at it a couple times but it remains full no matter how often I refill it with fresh cool water. So I make sure the veggies are wet, especially the lettuces with hold water in their crinkles.

Can they wait until Thursday for pellets? or should I get right to the store for some Oxbow Cavy Cuisine? One boy is 9 months, and the other is 5 months. They are the most adorable fluff-muffs ever and I want to make sure they have what they need.
Any other suggestions welcome.

[akstrohm]

They'll be okay until Thursday, but if you have Cavy Cuisine in a store I would get it. Otherwise just feed extra veggies and of course hay. You might want to order hay from Kleenmama in bulk. Otherwise you will go through the pet store bags very quickly.

Many guinea pigs drink very little water.

You should feed only lettuce, cilantro, and bell pepper until those are eaten consistently. Then you can add in one new veggie every few days. Right now they are being overwhelmed with too much variety. Introduce carrots and fruit last as they are treats and other veggies are more important.

[Ly&Pigs]

I've merged your new thread with your old thread. Instead of making new threads for a subject you've started, just update the original thread. It helps us mods keep track of things a lot better. Thanks.

[Matt Ceja]

Originally Posted by Ly&Pigs

Kiwi would be a good choice for a once weekly fruit as it's great for C.

With or without the skin? I have never fed my pigs kiwi but I buy it all the time.

[Cogni]

Re: threads: ok thanks makes sense.

The pellets are coming from Sweet Meadow. I ordered the guinea grab and there are 2 kinds of hay as well as the pellets. Buying in bulk is obviously the way to go, just like the C&C and fleece. Still working on getting coro and fleece though.

[Rnd210]

You shouldn't be giving guinea pigs sweet potatos as it is poisoness to them. Ly can correct me if I am wrong. But I know I read in the encyclopedia on guinea pigs that all bulb type plants, potatos, sweet potatos and dairy is poisoness to them along with the tops of some fruits and veggies.

[lissie]

Originally Posted by Rnd210

You shouldn't be giving guinea pigs sweet potatos as it is poisoness to them. Ly can correct me if I am wrong. But I know I read in the encyclopedia on guinea pigs that all bulb type plants, potatos, sweet potatos and dairy is poisoness to them along with the tops of some fruits and veggies.

I'm not Ly, but sweet potato is on her chart as ok to feed once or twice a month.

[Ly&Pigs]

Potatoes are poisonous yes, sweet potatoes and yams are not poisonous.

Dairy is not poisonous, but guinea pigs should not have dairy due to being lactose intolerant.

What encyclopedia on guinea pigs did you read?

Kiwi is fine with or without skin, just wash it first like you would any veggie/fruit.

[Rnd210]

Originally Posted by Ly&Pigs

Potatoes are poisonous yes, sweet potatoes and yams are not poisonous.

Dairy is not poisonous, but guinea pigs should not have dairy due to being lactose intolerant.

What encyclopedia on guinea pigs did you read?

Kiwi is fine with or without skin, just wash it first like you would any veggie/fruit.

I reread it and yes is does list that potatoes are poisonous and sweet potatoes are not mentioned but plants that are bulb like (tulips and onions) are poisonous such as Rubarb and a few others.

You can find it by searching guinea pigs, it's the wikiencyclopedeia online.