Diet 3: The Guinea Pigs

This is number three in my pet diets series of posts. If you missed the first two, you can find them here (dogs) and here (cats). From this point on, these posts will most likely be a lot more technical because the diets for my guinea pigs, birds, and reptiles is much more complicated than the dog and cat diets.

The Foods: Oxbow Cavy Cuisine, Oxbow Cavy Preformance, Timothy Hay, Alfalfa Hay, various fruits and vegetables, grass and other forages in the spring and summer

Right now, the guinea pigs get a staple diet of hay, lettuce, and pellets, Oxbow Cavy Cuisine for Sadie and Prudence and Oxbow Cavy Performance for baby Pam. In addition to those things, they get a varied amount of vegetables and fruits.

They get fruit no more than twice a week; they usually only get it once a week. They would get too much sugar if they ate fruit more that that. They get vegetables everyday.

Lately, I've been chopping up vegetables for the guinea pigs, the birds, and the bearded dragon all at the same time, essentially making mash or chop for everybody. I chop up the stuff they all can have and mix it up first. Then I divide it up into three parts (not equal parts), and add stuff to each part as necessary for whichever animal it goes to. At first, the guinea pigs weren't sure what to think of it, but now they love it.

The most common vegetables they get are lettuce (anything but iceberg), bell peppers (all colours), zucchini, carrots, tomatoes, and squash. They also get small amounts of cucumber, Swiss chard, broccoli. In addition to all of those vegetables, they get a very small amount of corn, collard greens, mustard greens, and kale.

Could it be improved? Absolutely. I am all the time messing with their diet, feeding more of this vegetable and less of that vegetable. I would love to be able to feed them Oxbow organic guinea pig food, but it is not very cost effective, costing twice as much as what I already feed.

I've also been doing some research on a pelletless diet, Hay and Fresh Foods. I would like to do this, but I have to do a lot more research first, and the information seems to be hard to come by.

Things I refuse to feed: Most brands of guinea pig food, especially the ones with seeds and other yucky stuff. Along with that goes most guinea pig treats food in stores. A lot of the food and treats designed for guinea pigs is just plain wrong.

Helpful things: Most of what I've learned about guinea pig diet and nutrition is from the internet. Guinea Lynx has been incredibly helpful in all aspects of guinea pig health in addition to nutrition. There are a couple of food charts I refer to, both of which are listed in a sidebar to the left.