Diet My piggies are FAT!

How much pellets do you give them? Or are they on a pellet free diet? I'd cut back on the carrots because they are sugary (from what I've been told)

You really cannot know if a guinea pig is overweight by just looking at them. It's too subjective. You need to be weighing them regularly. Only by weight can you know if a pig is outside of the average.

So all you give is lettuce for breakfast and dinner? Then an addition of 1 baby carrot? That's not enough of a variety for their diet.

I recently got told the same thing about my boys at the vet. She said that it was more than likely not really the vegetables but how much pellets I was giving them that is contributing to their weight. So like PigglieWigglies said how much do you feed? Try cutting back on that for a little while and weigh regularly and see if that makes a difference. I also find it really to hard to measure veggies as well so just do the best that you can.

I know bpatters has posted she has pigs that weigh 1200 - 1300 oz. I was flipping over my 1145 pig. Now she is 1210 oz and is still ok. Piggies are a little puggy naturally. the 700 - 900 oz they write as normal is for lab gps, not pets.

My girl gets 1/8 c kms pellets, unlimited hay and water. Am salad is green lettuce, radicchio, and green peppers. Dinner salad is green lettuce, green peppers, small baby carrot, and a cherry tomato. She's been steady at 1200 ish for 5 months now and is considered full grown at 1.5 yr so a big weight increase would be alarming (or loss) since she is done growing.

My pig looks very fat in certain postures and in others she looks like a little girl. Depends on how she is sitting.

IMO pellets (quality ones like KMS) is good to give, as long as it is no more than 1/8 c a day. Many days she doesn't even finish that. She never gets more in a day. Pellets have minerals and other stuff in there that isn't naturally found in veggies, so me this is THE complete diet. If she is out of control heavy then I may consider decreasing the amount before eliminating them.

How much do they weigh? Most weight charts that vets go by are too light -- pets generally weigh more than that. 1.1 kg is not too fat.

you said she weighs 1.1kg? I did the google conversion and it says she's at 1100 grams which isn't bad at all. One of my girls weighs that much.

(broken link removed) I knew they were pudgy, but not a lot. I'll cut down on the pellets, 1/2 cup daily for the three may be too much.

(broken link removed) Everytime I try to feed something different, like red or green peppers, they get diarrhea, so I try not to feed to many different things. They sometimes get celery, apples, and bananas. Anything I can do to be able to give them different things?

(broken link removed), (broken link removed), I guess they are a good weight. The other girls weigh less than Flickers, so they would be even better.

Do I eyeball ALL the lettuce and veggies to get one cup each? Or just measure the lettuce?

Kelly9 said:

(broken link removed) Everytime I try to feed something different, like red or green peppers, they get diarrhea, so I try not to feed to many different things. They sometimes get celery, apples, and bananas. Anything I can do to be able to give them different things?

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Unless you are giving it to them all at once with no gradual introduction, there's no reason it should cause diarrhea. Bell peppers are an excellent source of vit C. Bananas are known to sometimes cause diarrhea so those could be the culprit. I would cut the celery altogether. Not much in the way of nutritional value.

Quite honestly, 1/2 cup of pellets split amongst ALL 3 pigs, to me, isn't a bad amount.

And for veggies, I always gave a cup/half of lettuce, a baby carrot(or equivalent size), a coupla 1" slice of bell pepper per pig, a coupla stems of parsley or cliantro per pig, a baby tomato per pig. Those are staple veggies. About 3x a week a different veggie is added like a cucumber or something of the like and 2 times a week a small piece of fruit to each pig.

If you don't want to measure cups of lettuce, a large lettuce leaf is about a cup. So anything that is equal to the size of a large lettuce leaf.


As far as the bell peppers giving diarrhea. I've never heard of that happening. And I feel like something else maybe messing with them. But if you REALLY think it is the bell peppers, just start them off with a small amount. Give a quarter of a 1" ring for a week, per pig. If poos stay normal, up that to a 1/2 of a 1" ring, per pig. Again, if poos stay normal, add another 1/4 part to the 1" ring. Each week work your way up to the amount they should be receiving.

@CavyMama just curious I thought bananas caused constipation? I've seen multiple posts on here claiming they do. Can they cause both?

Celery is ok as long as you slice them and don't allow them to eat the celery strings as some piggies can choke on them (if I remember correctly.) I don't think banana's are something good for our cavy friends. Apples have alot of sugar and most fruits should be fed as a treat (via once in awhile). Diarrhea is never a good thing considering, as you say, it happens when you feed them green bell peppers. Bell peppers provide Vitamin C which is something piggies need. But like I said, diarrhea isn't a good thing for guinea pigs.

Note: I'd like to add that Celery is on the list to feed however I have had a bad experience with it and stopped feeding it to my girls completely.

Ditto the celery comment above. If you feed celery it must be cut in to small chunks to eliminate the possibility of strings choking them.

Princess_Piggie said:

@CavyMama just curious I thought bananas caused constipation? I've seen multiple posts on here claiming they do. Can they cause both?

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No, you are right. I meant constipation. I think all the frigid temps in my area have gone to my brain haha. Windchill tomorrow is supposed to reach -50.

You're kidding right! I made that exact joke yesterday, the BF did something really silly and I went 'has the cold like frozen all your good brain cells or something?' haha lol

At least I wasn't wrong about bananas. Good luck with the cold!

CavyMama I've been having those moments all day as well... hahahah that's hilarious... My family started joking that I was supposed to be a blond, but my hair was confused what color to turn... (Nothing against blonds, my sister is blond and she goes against all rules to being a blond... ) Lol but I'm in the same situation with the cold as well...

I take the strings out of celery and cut them up small because I get afraid of them choking. Since they aren't very nutiritional, I'll skip it. I have a better idea of what to do each time I feed them, instead of only one veggie at a time, I can give them little bits of a bunch. That would be better nutritionally.

i give them tiny pieces of greeen pepper and it still seems to give them diarhea. I don't know what is going on. At first I thought there was something on the pepper even though I washed it, like a bacteria. but it happens every time. I guess I'll keep working at it.

@Kelly9, if you're not feeding bell pepper, be sure to give a bunch veggies high in vitamin C, or else supplement with tablets. Guinea pigs are like us, they can't make their own vitamin C and they need it to be healthy.