Dietary Needs
"What do your parent's say before you get your desert?.
That's right, eat up all your greens.' This is my follow up
to the question I always put to the children I talk to at
schools I visit with my guinea pigs. The question is of course,
'What do we and guinea pigs, and only very few other animals
have in common. It is of course, the fact that we have to
eat vegetable matter to take in the essential vitamin C we
need while most animals, particularly carnivores, do not.
I am against adding this in the form of a supplement unless,
A, the guinea pig has been off it's green food through illness
for some time, or B, good quality green fodder is in short
supply.
It is a simple matter to ensure the sickly ones get their
supply, for invariably they are having to be syringe fed,
see Nursing. I simply put a small portion of a vitamin C Redoxen
tablet in the food as I'm mixing it.
The need for lots and lots of roughage, in the shape of hay,
I put down as the secondary next most important dietary need.
No, there isn't a great deal of nutritional value in it but
that's just the point.
Guinea pigs are herbivores, grazing animals. Like all animals,
their digestive systems have evolved down the ages through
the way they have had to forage for their food in the wild.
There are no scientifically formulated dry trough feeds out
in the wild with lots of lovely protein, minerals and vitamins
in them. To get the equivalent nutritional value as they can
they can get from handful of Gerty Guinea pig, in the wild
a whole heap of grazing would have to be done!
This is why guinea pigs, like all herbivores, have constantly
growing teeth, because of the hard load they have to take
on. If they were fitted with the kind we come equipped with
they would quickly wear down to their gums. Depriving guinea
pigs of the work they have to do to get their food is not
doing them a favour and is one of the main reasons for dental
problems in the domestic variety.
While I thoroughly approve of the most modern dry feeds that
are available in this country, I most certainly do not approve
over feeding guinea pigs with them. Don't refill the food
troughs until you can see the bottom of them is the general
rule. It cost much more to keep them brimful and it can make
guinea pigs lazy in their grazing activities. The corollary
to that of course, is to make sure that there is plenty of
good dust free meadow hay available. I bed mine on it and
get my supply by the bale from a company which differentiates
between hay for general use and that for small animal use.
When it comes to cultivated vegetables the best rule of thumb
is that any that humans like guinea pigs like as well, and
the same goes for root crops with the exception of the potato.
As a good bulker for syringe feeding sick animals the old
spud is brilliant, and so is the powdered variety, but I have
yet to see an guinea pig take a bite out of a raw one!
There are a couple of vegetables to be wary of such as lettuce
and spinach, but in my experience guineas are pretty shrewd
when it comes to working out what is not god for them in large
amounts. I give mine lettuce as a treat and spinach just for
a change now and again but more often than not they'll tear
into both when it is first placed before them but invariably
they leave some. The only rider I would add was avoid these
when very young guinea pigs are about for like little children
they are more don't seem to have such discerning pallets and
are more likely to pig out and upset their tums!.
I'm all for the occasional proprietary nibbles and baked
seedy sticks providing they are nice and hard and give the
teeth plenty of work to do, but don't over do them for they
are very rich fare.
