Chewing?

Hay is the best for wearing down molars. They need an unlimited supply of hay.

They can chew a little bit of cardboard/paper bags/newspapers but if they start taking lage chunks out of it it should be removed.

If you use newspapers as an absorbant layer under your main bedding and they chew on it, if read it's best to make sure the ink is soy based, which you should be able to find out by calling your newspaper company.

They already have lots of hay. They haven't started taking chunks out of the boxes yet, so I'll leave them in for now. As for the bedding, we use fleece with towels underneath, so the only time the pigs are exposed to newpaper is during floortime.

Thanks a bunch!

Cavies are excellent chewers. Since their teeth are constantly growing they are driven to chew to keep them down to a managable length. The best things for that are their food + hay. You can also give them untreated wood as well. but its ok for them to chew on wood and newspaper as long as theres nothing toxic on them. But its inevitable, anything you put in with them is going to get chewed on, and probably a lot. I wouldn't worry about it unless it looks like they are eating it and not their food.

You may want to throw a piece of fleece over the newspapers when they are down for floortime.

Is it okay if they chew on untreated pine wood? I know you're not supposed to use anything but kiln-dried pine bedding, but I haven't heard anything about them chewing on a block of pine.

I'm not sure of all the different wood, but what I give my cavies comes from an apple tree in my backyard.

Ella chews on her igloo and it doesnt even scratch! I have an apple tree in my backyard and I take some garden shears and just clip a small branch into pieces. She loves to chew on that!

Could they chew on a Gooseberry branch? They had some chunks of wood in the pet store and they were branches from a Gooseberry bush and I wondered if that would be okay?