Tammy
New Member
Cavy Slave
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2011
- Messages
- 2
Hi there...
I know that there are going to be some piggie lovers who will want to crucify me for what I'm about to post but please understand that this is just an observation from my own, albeit short, experience with my guineas. I got my first 2 guineas 2 months ago on the 8th of September, a red self mix breed (American x Abyssinian) I named Meg (aka Nutmeg) and a pale Himalayan American I named Molly. I got them at about 8 - 12 weeks of age. I had a custom 4 level cage built (THANK YOU DAD!) of which each level is 7.5 sq ft. Ok. I added another 2 piggies to my family last week Monday, the 7th of November, A red and white Dutch American I named Amelia and a red and black brindle American I named Isabella. The new babies are approximately 8 - 10 weeks old. So far all 4 are happy, healthy, active and eating me out of house and home in their piggie mansion. Here are my observations:
Straw:
Most piggie info sites berate the negatives of straw for guinea pigs and I was not going to even consider straw until I realised just how scarce good quality green hay is around here. Even the oat hay is golden and no longer green. Timothy hay is not even an option as it only comes in tiny packages at the pet store and a single package literally costs an arm and a leg. Timothy hay does not seem to be as readily available here as it is elsewhere in the world. So I had little choice other than to invest in some straw/yellowed hay and my piggies took to it like fish to water. I also invested in some dried Lucerne and they also took to that. The straw I buy is actually quite soft and my piggies munch on a mixture of straw and Lucerne very happily.
Edited by bpatters: Neither straw nor lucerne provides guinea pigs with the nutrition that grass hays do. Straw in particular has very little nutritional value. Lucerne is a legume, not a grass. For any other readers coming to this thread, please do NOT feed your pigs straw or lucerne.
Straw as bedding:
My piggies prefer to have straw as their bedding over towelling and fleece so for the 2 feeding levels of the cage I use towelling and the rest is straw. I realised they preferred the straw when I left 1 level with straw bedding and the rest had towelling on and they kept going back to the straw level. - I know that all sites say that straw is hard and bad for piggies because it can hurt them but again, the straw I buy is actually quite soft on their mouths and their feet.
Edited by bpatters: The problem with straw as a bedding is that it doesn't absorb urine, not that it can hurt their feet. If you have toweling underneath, it's likely ok as long as you change the straw frequently.
Pellets:
My guinea pigs refuse point blank to eat the proper guinea pig pellets. There is another type of much smaller golden tan pellet that I get from the feed store and they will only eat that. I have also tried mixing the 2 types of pellets together but they only seek out the pellets they want and leave the guinea pig pellets behind.
Edited by bpatters: They can't eat the crap pellets if you don't give them to them. You run a rather high risk of your pigs winding up with urinary tract stones from eating generic pellets.
Fresh food:
Something I noticed on the guinea pig sites is that they say to feel a cup of fresh food per adult piggie per day and to use the fresh food as treats. They also say not to feed cabbage and iceberg lettuce. I feed my piggies an all you can eat buffet of fresh leafy greens, veggies and a little fruit a minimum of 3 times per day. I do feed them cabbage and iceberg lettuce but only the dark green outer leaves and not the paler, watery inner leaves, not that they like the inner leaves anyway. I feed them a variety of spinach, lettuce, cabbage, soup celery, coriander, parsley, carrot greens, turnip greens, cauliflower greens, carrots, apple, pear, orange, baby corn and strawberry daily. They will not touch any form of green, yellow or red pepper, squash, marrow, cucumber and butternut squash. When the weather is good they also much their fair share of grass and weeds in the garden (none poisonous).
I feed my guinea pigs as much fresh greens and veggies as they will eat daily instead of restricting them to only a certain amount or using it as treats only. I do, however, restrict their intake of fruits because of the sugar content.
Edited by bpatters: Your pigs need long-strand grass hay much more than they need unlimited fresh vegetables. The hay has the appropriate ration of calcium to phosphorus, keeps their teeth ground down, and keeps the gut moving. The vegetables will do nothing for their teeth and their gut, and since you have no idea what the Ca
ratio of what you're feeding is, you have no idea of the risk of urinary tract stones you're running.
Faux-pas:
I am very well aware of the fact that I have mentioned some piggie care faux-pas that will make many a piggie owner turn over in their grave but my girls are all happy and very healthy from what I observe from watching them and weighing them. they are all growing nicely and gaining weight on track. They are also active and seem to be enjoying their life with me.
Like I said, this is just my personal observation from my experience with my girls and I am not looking for unkind critical responses. I do have my guinea pigs' best interests at heart and monitor them carefully. I have picked up 1 little niggle with 2 of my girls and I am watching it carefully. Meg sneezes every so often but I have noticed that it only happens when she is rooting around in her straw bedding so it seems to be the straw dust causing it. Amelia also sneezed the other day so I am watching her carefully but it also seems to be straw dust. But I am watching it carefully and at the first sign of weight loss I will get my girls to a vet pronto.
Anyway. I do love my babies and as ignorant about guinea pigs as most people are in this country I am not but I have made the above mentioned observations in the past 2 months.
Edited by bpatters: You said, "Like I said, this is just my personal observation from my experience with my girls and I am not looking for unkind critical responses." I'm not being unkind, but I am being critical. You have two months of experience with guinea pigs, likely with young ones who are not old enough to have developed many of the problems guinea pigs may exhibit. Two months experience does not qualify you to recommend practices that are so clearly contrary to those promoted by people with many years of experience of caring for hundreds of guinea pigs, or of many exotic vets.
Many young kids read these forums, and do not have the critical judgment to sort out bad or harmful advice from the best practices recommended by this site. Please refrain from offering such wide-ranging, poorly thought out advice until you have either some years of experience with guinea pigs, or have taken the time to educate yourself thoroughly on the adverse effects of the practices you recommend.
I know that there are going to be some piggie lovers who will want to crucify me for what I'm about to post but please understand that this is just an observation from my own, albeit short, experience with my guineas. I got my first 2 guineas 2 months ago on the 8th of September, a red self mix breed (American x Abyssinian) I named Meg (aka Nutmeg) and a pale Himalayan American I named Molly. I got them at about 8 - 12 weeks of age. I had a custom 4 level cage built (THANK YOU DAD!) of which each level is 7.5 sq ft. Ok. I added another 2 piggies to my family last week Monday, the 7th of November, A red and white Dutch American I named Amelia and a red and black brindle American I named Isabella. The new babies are approximately 8 - 10 weeks old. So far all 4 are happy, healthy, active and eating me out of house and home in their piggie mansion. Here are my observations:
Straw:
Most piggie info sites berate the negatives of straw for guinea pigs and I was not going to even consider straw until I realised just how scarce good quality green hay is around here. Even the oat hay is golden and no longer green. Timothy hay is not even an option as it only comes in tiny packages at the pet store and a single package literally costs an arm and a leg. Timothy hay does not seem to be as readily available here as it is elsewhere in the world. So I had little choice other than to invest in some straw/yellowed hay and my piggies took to it like fish to water. I also invested in some dried Lucerne and they also took to that. The straw I buy is actually quite soft and my piggies munch on a mixture of straw and Lucerne very happily.
Edited by bpatters: Neither straw nor lucerne provides guinea pigs with the nutrition that grass hays do. Straw in particular has very little nutritional value. Lucerne is a legume, not a grass. For any other readers coming to this thread, please do NOT feed your pigs straw or lucerne.
Straw as bedding:
My piggies prefer to have straw as their bedding over towelling and fleece so for the 2 feeding levels of the cage I use towelling and the rest is straw. I realised they preferred the straw when I left 1 level with straw bedding and the rest had towelling on and they kept going back to the straw level. - I know that all sites say that straw is hard and bad for piggies because it can hurt them but again, the straw I buy is actually quite soft on their mouths and their feet.
Edited by bpatters: The problem with straw as a bedding is that it doesn't absorb urine, not that it can hurt their feet. If you have toweling underneath, it's likely ok as long as you change the straw frequently.
Pellets:
My guinea pigs refuse point blank to eat the proper guinea pig pellets. There is another type of much smaller golden tan pellet that I get from the feed store and they will only eat that. I have also tried mixing the 2 types of pellets together but they only seek out the pellets they want and leave the guinea pig pellets behind.
Edited by bpatters: They can't eat the crap pellets if you don't give them to them. You run a rather high risk of your pigs winding up with urinary tract stones from eating generic pellets.
Fresh food:
Something I noticed on the guinea pig sites is that they say to feel a cup of fresh food per adult piggie per day and to use the fresh food as treats. They also say not to feed cabbage and iceberg lettuce. I feed my piggies an all you can eat buffet of fresh leafy greens, veggies and a little fruit a minimum of 3 times per day. I do feed them cabbage and iceberg lettuce but only the dark green outer leaves and not the paler, watery inner leaves, not that they like the inner leaves anyway. I feed them a variety of spinach, lettuce, cabbage, soup celery, coriander, parsley, carrot greens, turnip greens, cauliflower greens, carrots, apple, pear, orange, baby corn and strawberry daily. They will not touch any form of green, yellow or red pepper, squash, marrow, cucumber and butternut squash. When the weather is good they also much their fair share of grass and weeds in the garden (none poisonous).
I feed my guinea pigs as much fresh greens and veggies as they will eat daily instead of restricting them to only a certain amount or using it as treats only. I do, however, restrict their intake of fruits because of the sugar content.
Edited by bpatters: Your pigs need long-strand grass hay much more than they need unlimited fresh vegetables. The hay has the appropriate ration of calcium to phosphorus, keeps their teeth ground down, and keeps the gut moving. The vegetables will do nothing for their teeth and their gut, and since you have no idea what the Ca
ratio of what you're feeding is, you have no idea of the risk of urinary tract stones you're running.Faux-pas:
I am very well aware of the fact that I have mentioned some piggie care faux-pas that will make many a piggie owner turn over in their grave but my girls are all happy and very healthy from what I observe from watching them and weighing them. they are all growing nicely and gaining weight on track. They are also active and seem to be enjoying their life with me.
Like I said, this is just my personal observation from my experience with my girls and I am not looking for unkind critical responses. I do have my guinea pigs' best interests at heart and monitor them carefully. I have picked up 1 little niggle with 2 of my girls and I am watching it carefully. Meg sneezes every so often but I have noticed that it only happens when she is rooting around in her straw bedding so it seems to be the straw dust causing it. Amelia also sneezed the other day so I am watching her carefully but it also seems to be straw dust. But I am watching it carefully and at the first sign of weight loss I will get my girls to a vet pronto.
Anyway. I do love my babies and as ignorant about guinea pigs as most people are in this country I am not but I have made the above mentioned observations in the past 2 months.
Edited by bpatters: You said, "Like I said, this is just my personal observation from my experience with my girls and I am not looking for unkind critical responses." I'm not being unkind, but I am being critical. You have two months of experience with guinea pigs, likely with young ones who are not old enough to have developed many of the problems guinea pigs may exhibit. Two months experience does not qualify you to recommend practices that are so clearly contrary to those promoted by people with many years of experience of caring for hundreds of guinea pigs, or of many exotic vets.
Many young kids read these forums, and do not have the critical judgment to sort out bad or harmful advice from the best practices recommended by this site. Please refrain from offering such wide-ranging, poorly thought out advice until you have either some years of experience with guinea pigs, or have taken the time to educate yourself thoroughly on the adverse effects of the practices you recommend.
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