Pellets What type of pellets are the best?

[donaldsl]

Hello all,

Being new to piggie motherhood, I have a few questions. One being about food.

I have my girls on pellets and hay with the occasional veggie. I pick them up yesterday and the person that I got them from gave me a half bag of pellets. They are the Hagen brand gp pellets. I'm going to go out on a lim here and say that I most likely should not be feeding this to them.

I'm in dire need of suggestions of what to do. I'm going out to the grocery store today to pick up some more veggies and such, but I don't want to overload their systems.

Two of my girls were pet store babies only a few days ago (the kids wanted nothing to do with them at the house i got all 4 from). The other two are at least 6 months, but i have no idea how old the others are.

HELP!!

Thanks!

 

[Paula]

Hey Leigh, and welcome!

You're right, the food you mentioned is not great, and really the only things we "recommend" here are Oxbow, Kleenmama's, and Sweet Meadow.

If you can't find Oxbow locally, you might look into having one of the three shipped to you, though I'm not sure if that would be possible in Canada. You'd just have to look and see what's available.

Here are the websites:
(broken link removed)
Oxbow Animal Health | Home
(broken link removed)

Good luck, and again, welcome!

 

[donaldsl]

Thanks!

It looks like Oxbow has stores in Ontario, which is good for me, but they are still a little far away. I'm not going to lie, a 6 hour drive (12 hour round trip) for food and hay is crazy! Once I get back to Ottawa (I'm at school in Guelph right now) I am going to look into some of the feed stores around my place ( I'm in horse country) and see if they can get some in for me.

 

[JD In Van]

For veggies for your girls to start get lettuce (green leaf or romaine is good to start), bell peppers (green, orange or yellow to start) and cilantro.

You should offer these twice daily to your girls until they're eatting them all regularly, don't worry about any other veggies until they're comfortable eatting these ones and will eat a cup a day each of them.

Oxbow is widely available in Canada at Petland and various vets and rescues. Once you've got a good supply I would recommend finding a non pet store source for them, it will be both cheaper and not contributing to the pet store problem but for your inital purchase that might be the best bet.

Given the ages of your girls you could also go with Martins (this is very widely available at Bosleys - a feed only chain, try them first - and various others) until you can get some Oxbow. It's an alfalfa based food though so you will not want to feed it too long to the older ones.

 

[donaldsl]

so I was very happy today when I went to the local pet supply store. They had the oxbow pellets and hay! I was supper surprised. I spoke to the woman in charge of the small animals and she said what ever i wanted they could order it in for me with no markup!
I'm not going to start the pet-store thing again, but I was very happy with her help and that they even carried healthier foods!