Hello Members! I'm a first time owner of a guinea pig!

[Andrea23r]

Hello Everyone, my name is Andrea, and I recently bought my first guinea pig named Anna (pronounced like the character from frozen) last week. She is approximately two to three months old (as I was told) and looks like she is in good health (that I have noticed), but since I am a new owner, I am wondering what works as far as nutritionally.I know about the calcium deficiency that they have, so I have fed my precious Anna oranges and carrots mainly to help because I heard using supplements was a waste of money.

Any suggestions as to what other vegetables and fruits I can feed my piggy that will not only help with her Calcium level but be enjoyable to her too, and how frequent I should be giving them to her?

Oh, and also, how do I determine which sounds are good and which sounds are bad?

 

[Starthecavy123]

Welcome to the forum. I would check out the nutrition section. Also make sure not to give to many oranges. Red or green leaf lettuce is a good option. But the nutrition section you definitely want to check out. There you will find a veggie chart with fruits and veggies that are okay to feed and how often.

 

[Rywen]

Hi there and welcome to the forum! Piggies need unlimited hay (timothy, orchard, bluegrass), fresh veggies, and at her age you can give her alfalfa pellets or parsley for the extra calcium. They also need vitamin C and bell pepper is the best way to do that, or oxbow daily C tablets (don't use vitamin c drops for water, they are useless).

 

[bpatters]

Welcome to the forum! We'd love to see pictures.

Unless they've had a poor diet, pigs don't have calcium deficiencies. In fact, it's the other way around. Many adult pigs have problems with too much calcium, resulting in bladder stones, which are painful for the pig AND for your pocketbook.

GPs under six months do need some extra calcium, because their bones are still growing. You can accomplish that by feeding them alfalfa pellets, then switching to timothy when they're six months old. Fruits shouldn't be fed except as an occasional treat. GPs aren't built to handle sugar, and it can upset the bacterial balance in their gut, resulting in bad GI problems. Carrots also should be restricted to a knuckle-sized piece per day.

Vegetable staples should be red or green leaf lettuce and bell peppers. GPs, like humans, cannot synthesize vitamin C, so have to get it in their diets, and bell peppers are an excellent way to do that. Other common things to feed include tomatoes (a large cherry tomato per day), a few young green beans, two or three wheels of summer squash, radicchio, belgian endive, occasional spinach or kale (they're too high in oxalic acid to be fed except very sparingly), corn husks (the inner ones) and silks, and occasional herbs such as parsley, cilantro, etc. See https://www.guineapigcages.com/foru...vy-Nutrition-Charts-amp-Poisonous-Plants-List for what you can feed and how often.