Nutrition No Pellet Diet Switch

VBaamonde · Mar 1, 2016

I have a sludge prone piggie who has just been advised by our vet to cut out pellets. She had been getting a cup of veggies (green leaf lettuce, slice of green bell pepper, one cherry tomato, one baby carrot, one blueberry and 1 cucumber slice) and 1/8 cup KMs timothy pellets a day. My vet said that I can just remove the pellets and she should be fine with just the veggies and her timothy hay. I was told not to increase veggie amount.

Won't she lose weight this way? I have a scale and am going to begin monitoring her weight, but has anyone else gone through the pellet to no pellet diet transition?

Any feeding and portioning suggestions to a calcium intolerant pig?

Thanks!

bpatters · Mar 2, 2016

She may lose some when you cut out pellets, but it won't be a lot, and her weight will stabilize.

She's not intolerant to calcium. She just produces a lot of it in her urine. All you can do is limit calcium (I aim for no more than .4% in anything I give), keep her well hydrated, and keep her moving. Someone has described guinea pigs as like snow globes. All that sludge accumulates in the bottom of the bladder, but if you can keep the pig moving, it will stay suspended and will be peed out.

pinky · Mar 2, 2016

bpatters said:
She may lose some when you cut out pellets, but it won't be a lot, and her weight will stabilize.

She's not intolerant to calcium. She just produces a lot of it in her urine. All you can do is limit calcium (I aim for no more than .4% in anything I give), keep her well hydrated, and keep her moving. Someone has described guinea pigs as like snow globes. All that sludge accumulates in the bottom of the bladder, but if you can keep the pig moving, it will stay suspended and will be peed out.

I have to agree about keeping them moving. One of my vets once told me that he suspects that active guinea pigs are less likely to develop stones. Mammals in the wild do a lot of running but a guinea pig in a cage tends to be less active. One more reason to have a huge cage so they have space enough to run laps.

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Nutrition No Pellet Diet Switch

VBaamonde

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bpatters

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pinky

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