General VITAMIN C!! Please read!

I have been supplementing with my girls because they have been soooo picky about their vegetables. I have only had them here about 1.5 weeks. With the transition and their young age, I felt supplementing for now would be ok. One of the girls will eat green pappers, not red or yellow and lettuces...and my other girl will only eat lettuces...

Should I be doing something different?

@HappyPiggies14 there's nothing wrong with supplementing, Vitamin C is water soluble so even if they get more than they can use the excess will just get washed out with their urine. We were more arguing about the idea that every guinea pig absolutely needs supplementing. What you're doing sounds fine, it never hurts to be on the safe side when you have picky eaters. That said if you're using the water drops you might want to switch to the tablet or powder form. The drops give the water an off taste that can discourage drinking, and exposure to sunlight denatures vitamin C pretty quickly.

Yay! Ok...I always give crushed 1/2 tablet oxbow daily c on PC of lettuce and hand feed so I know that they each got it...thank you!!

I have been feeding my 6 piggies, 2 boars and 4 sows, timothy hay, a reputable guinea pig ration that includes vitamin C, daily fresh fruits & veggies for over a year now. I had also been supplementing with daily vitamin C, the Oxbow Daily C. When I ran out of these chewable vitamin C tabs, I made up some of my own using dried fruit powders and vitamin C powder. They loved them.

Then I ran out of my DIY vitamin C supplements, got too busy with life and forgot to make a new batch. Within just a few weeks, one of the boars developed signs of scurvy, which progressed until I finally realized what was happening to him. Quickly I mixed up a new batch of "guinea pig fruit leather" with the vitamin C powder included. Within just 2 days, all the scurvy symptoms reversed, with free feed of the fruit rollups. These tasty, nutritious treats proved that FOOD IS MEDICINE. My little herd was quickly restored to health, and they are all happier for it.

From now on, mixing up a batch of Vitamin C leather will be a priority, right along with providing quality hay, quality pellets, quality daily fresh veggies & fruits, and fresh water.

@DancingTree, a supplement should really not be the main source of vitamin to for your pigs. Many people don't give their pigs supplements at all, and they're fine. If your pellets have stabilized vitamin C and you feed fresh veggies, that should provide all the C they need. The only time this wouldn't be the case is if your pellets were over 6 months old (the vitamin C in pellets degrades after about 6 months and becomes useless), or if you didn't feed enough veggies that were specifically high in C. For example, each pig should get 1/8-1/4 of a green bell pepper every day.

Having said that, I am curious as to what your "fruit leather" recipe is, because I do think it is a good idea to supplement vitamin C even though it's usually unnecessary. I'm using Oxbow Daily C right now but they will be discontinuing them soon, so I'd like to have another kind and it would be nice to be able to make them myself.

@pigger123 --- I got tired of spending $7.99 for 90 tablets of the Oxbox Daily C, (as a vitamin C supplement to an already great cavy diet that I listed above). One bottle would only last 15 days for my herd of 6. So I read the Oxbow label, and got inspired & creative.

Being a DIY-er, I'm experimenting with easy to make purees of their favorite foods (fresh or cooked) and adding vitamin C powder, then drying in my food dehydrator. It's as easy as that. I break the dried sheet up into bite-sized pieces and feed it to them as treats. It's fun to teach them tricks with it too, as a reward.

Hmm, my vet told me the recommended amount is 10-15mg of vitamin C per day. UNLESS, you buy pellets that already include vitamin C. If that's the case, extra vitamin C tablets will be overly excessive.