Nutrition What is the best treat to feed your guinea pig if your training it?

A bit of anything they regularly eat. They're not picky, and will be glad to have whatever you give them.

if you've sampled different fruits and vegetables with your guinea pig, you should know what they like the most. I'd use those favorite fruits/veggies as treats! My guinea pig loves apples, but of course since apples are generally hard fruits, you need to mince them up before feeding to them. Here are just some ideas for guinea pig fruit/veggie treats: (broken link removed)

You don't need to mince anything you give to a guinea pig unless you're sprinkling an unfamiliar food on its pellets. Guinea pig teeth are like razor knives, and they'll do the mincing just fine, thank you. Just give them a small chunk as a reward, but don't use too much fruit for doing that, because the sugar can upset their digestive tracts.
@richguinea, I'm not too impressed with that food site. For one thing, it says to feed extra hay if a pig has diarrhea from eating too much fruit. In fact, the generally accepted practice for treating diarrhea is to remove all fruits and vegetables from the diet until the stool firms up. Excess vegetables do not cause diarrhea unless there's something else going on, or the pig is intolerant to something. The pig may develop dental problems if it eats too many veggies and not enough hay, but the vegetables themselves generally don't cause diarrhea.

There's a better food list at https://www.guineapigcages.com/foru...vy-Nutrition-Charts-amp-Poisonous-Plants-List.

thanks! ill check it out. so timothy hay doesn't help with the digestive system? because thats exactly what i've been doing....

I hope an excess of hay doesnt actually hurt my pig..

@richguinea Hay is needed in their diet so I don't see how it would just them.

There is one part of timothy hay that my piggies love! I use that as treats for training

richguinea said:

thanks! ill check it out. so timothy hay doesn't help with the digestive system? because thats exactly what i've been doing....

I hope an excess of hay doesnt actually hurt my pig..

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There's no such thing as an excess of hay, all guinea pigs need an unlimited supply of grass hay all the time. Hay is essential for the digestive system and to keep their teeth worn down, so it should make up the majority of their diet. Bpatters was just saying that hay is not a treat or supplement, because it needs to be given at all times.

Well, what I was actually saying, but apparently not clearly, is that if a pig has diarrhea, the treatment is not giving extra hay, it's taking away the fruit and vegetables until the matter is resolved. You could give more hay, and the pigs may be hungry for it if you've reduced their fruits and veggies. But that hay would just be replacing the calories not eaten from fruit/veggies, not treating the diarrhea.

@richguinea, you can't give an excess of hay to a guinea pig. If you had to pick only one food for a guinea pig's diet for all of its life, it would have to be hay.

I have trained my 3 pigs now especially one of my pigs she is my little genius (and she loves doing it, she gets so excited!). She can do all sorts of things including picking up only the red ring when I set down 3 different colored rings. My other pigs are better at other things of course each pig is different in what tricks they might be good at and what they enjoy doing (some pigs might not like training so much! so respect your piggy).

The best treats are veggies, but cut up super small. You want something quick so as you say "good girl" or "good boy", click your clicker, or whatever means they completed the task correctly, it is instantaneous with no delay between the action and the treat. If they take forever to chew they may not associate it as well. It also makes them learn faster and you can do more training in one session as repetition and consistency is key so you could easily feed them their 1.5 cup daily veggie amount during just one session if you aren't careful haha.

Just some advice: You must continue training each and every day, and at first it helps to only do one specific trick per session with maybe 2 sessions per day max to let your piggy take it all in. Every pig is different but of course you should take it slowly and start really simple. After the first few tricks they will have learned how to learn more tricks if that makes sense so it will become easier to teach new ones. And of course make sure the pig is happy and comfortable during training. Start each new trick doing it exactly the same place, like a spot on a towel, and with no distractions. Once they know it really well you can try it with slight distraction like another person and maybe on a different surface. They know to do the trick exactly the way they learned it so if you only taught them on a towel with no distraction saying it a specific way they might have trouble if you say that command somewhere else. Just something to remember. Guinea pigs are super smart and it can be a great bonding experience training your piggy as long as you are patient and caring.

Thank you! Thanks for the training advice to! I want to bond with them so I thought training them to do tricks would be a fun activity! I will be careful to see if she does not like being trained then I'll stop but any way thx for all the good advise!

Yeah, luckily piggies aren't terribly picky. Whenever I have to trim nails or clean bums, I do it at the time of day they normally get their veggies. I take some of the peppers or carrots or whatever and use them to bribe them for a bit, then they get the rest of their evening portion. I've never had a piggie turn up a nose.