Guinea Pig Diet
A Quick Guide to Guinea Pig Diet
It is not hard at all to provide your pet with a balanced guinea pig diet. Guinea pigs are complete vegetarians, and are healthiest when fed a variety of fresh vegetables and fruit along with their guinea pig food pellets. The biggest need for any guinea pig is to have grass hay and water available at all times. Next, they should have a daily feeding of food pellets.
While you can find several sources that will recommend having pellets available twenty-four hours a day, the truth is, that unless your guinea pig is under six months old, this is not the best thing to do. It can lead to a guinea pig eating too much and becoming obese. An average size guinea pig should eat in the range of one to two ounces of guinea pig pellets a day. If there is leftover food, feed less but if your guinea pig looks like he is searching for food, add a little more. Remove any food that in not eaten in one hour. Guinea pigs under six months of age are the ones who should have access to pellets at all times.
Guinea pig pellets are high in protein. That is why you should not buy pellets that have extra fat, nuts, seeds or dried fruit. Many of these mixtures have sunflower seeds that are still in their shells. If you feed seeds at all, make sure they are shelled. Many guinea pigs die each year from choking on various kinds of seed and nut shells. Guinea pigs are also sensitive to abrupt diet changes, so if you change your brand of pellets, do it slowly. Start by mixing in a little, and then adding more and more with their previous brand of food.
Because guinea pigs cannot create or store vitamin C, it is extremely important that you provide enough each day through their diet. An adult guinea pig needs in the neighborhood of 10 mg and a lactating guinea pig needs 20 mg. You should not trust guinea pig pellets to have enough vitamin C as it breaks down during storage, and it is impossible to know exactly how long your pellets have been in storage and transit. So, add to your guinea pig diet vegetables and fruits that are rich in vitamin C to ensure it gets the proper amount. Vitamin C can also be added to water as a supplement but it must be done daily.
A guinea pig diet should have vegetables and fruits to provide variety as well as the appropriate vitamin C. Just pellets and hay is a very bland guinea pig diet. Check out the quantity of vitamins and minerals your guinea pig is getting from pellets and then supplement with veggies and fruit so that they get enough of everything they need but not too much. The most important ingredients to look for are calcium, phosphorus and vitamin C. You can buy a book or search the internet for information on exactly what vegetables and fruits have for specific percentages of different vitamins and minerals.
Guinea pigs should only get sweet fruit infrequently or they will develop a sweet tooth and stop eating other foods that are healthier for them. The best supplemental food you can give a guinea pig is a variety of green, leafy vegetables. That includes greens such as turnip, collards, dandelion, plus kale, spinach and parsley.