Advice for feeding baby piggies

jazzpiggie

jazzpiggie

New Born Pup
Joined
Apr 4, 2024
Messages
24
Reaction score
24
Points
80
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Hi everyone! I’m new here :)

I had 3 pairs of piggies as a young girl, but I’m much older now and my son and I have just adopted a pair of baby piggies.

We didn’t realise that the piggies were only a month old until we went to pick them up! It is my understanding that their mother had already been adopted by the time we went to pick them up.

The youngest pig I had in the past was about 4 months old. I’m just wondering if there’s anything we need to be mindful of in terms of baby piggie diet (eg best type of hay / pellets / fresh foods to include/avoid etc?)
 
Congratulations and welcome. Someone will be along soon with all the links that contain fantastic advice.
 
:wel:

Their diet from birth is the same as an adult piggy - unlimited hay, one cup of veg and one tablespoon of pellets.

Any grass hay is absolutely fine.

Introduce new veg to them slowly and carefully. Introduce one type of veg for a few days/week and then in the second week add in a small amount of a different type. Once you’ve got them on the recommended daily variety then you can work on increasing quantities.
The four safe daily veggies are lettuce, coriander/cilantro, cucumber and bell pepper.
Ensure you don’t feed high calcium veggies much such as spinach, kale and parsley. One small amount once a week is plenty. Too much calcium can lead to the formation of bladder stones as they get older.

They do not need baby/young piggy pellets, and can be fed normal adult pellets.
Try to choose one which is grass/timothy hay based. Whichever type you use, ensure they are kept strictly limited. Overeating pellets can lead to unhealthy weight gain as well as bringing too much calcium into the diet (drinking water if in a hard water country/area along with pellets being the most calcium into the diet).

The guide below explains how to provide a balanced diet

Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets
 
jazzpiggie said:
Hi everyone! I’m new here :)

I had 3 pairs of piggies as a young girl, but I’m much older now and my son and I have just adopted a pair of baby piggies.

We didn’t realise that the piggies were only a month old until we went to pick them up! It is my understanding that their mother had already been adopted by the time we went to pick them up.

The youngest pig I had in the past was about 4 months old. I’m just wondering if there’s anything we need to be mindful of in terms of baby piggie diet (eg best type of hay / pellets / fresh foods to include/avoid etc?)
Click to expand...

Hi

Please just feed a normal hay based diet (it makes over three quarters of the daily food intake) while veg and forage, pellets and any treats all together only replace the supplementary role that wild forage used to have. A balanced, mainly hay/grass based diet can add about 1-2 years to an average healthy life span and take it from the lower to the higher end.

You can feed two tablespoons of pellets instead of one for the first month for some extra calcium or feed a bit more dry forage but the actual extra amounts are truly minute. My own home-born babies have done extremely well on a normal daily diet. In the long term, it is your good

You may find that recommendations to veg and pellets have changed quite considerably over the last decade. Our comprehensive diet guide which looks at diet as a whole and each food group in practical detail will hopefully help you; it is balanced and contains most vitamins, trace elements and enough vitamin C, so no worries about supplementation.
Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets

We have got a New Owners information collection with updated basic information, including the most comprehensive hot weather guide, lots of new insights into understanding guinea pig behaviours, piggy whispering and guinea pigs as a species in their own right but also about grooming care, health monitoring, how to spot early signs of illness and how quickly to seea vet and a guide that tells you exactly what to do when when bringing home new piggies and settling them in etc.
You may want to bookmark the link, browse, read and re-read at need: Getting Started - Essential Information for New Owners

We also recommend that you double-check the gender with us, just to be on the safe side. Our Sexing Guide encourages our members to try and learn what exactly to look and feel for in the less obvious but much more gender divisive areas but we do offer a second opinion courtesy service to make sure that there are no unwelcome surprises. Baby boars need separating at 3 weeks or 250g of body weight, whichever comes first in order to prevent any mother-son or sibling pregnancies.
Illustrated Sexing Guide
 
Wiebke said:
Hi

Please just feed a normal hay based diet (it makes over three quarters of the daily food intake) while veg and forage, pellets and any treats all together only replace the supplementary role that wild forage used to have. A balanced, mainly hay/grass based diet can add about 1-2 years to an average healthy life span and take it from the lower to the higher end.

You can feed two tablespoons of pellets instead of one for the first month for some extra calcium or feed a bit more dry forage but the actual extra amounts are truly minute. My own home-born babies have done extremely well on a normal daily diet. In the long term, it is your good

You may find that recommendations to veg and pellets have changed quite considerably over the last decade. Our comprehensive diet guide which looks at diet as a whole and each food group in practical detail will hopefully help you; it is balanced and contains most vitamins, trace elements and enough vitamin C, so no worries about supplementation.
Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets

We have got a New Owners information collection with updated basic information, including the most comprehensive hot weather guide, lots of new insights into understanding guinea pig behaviours, piggy whispering and guinea pigs as a species in their own right but also about grooming care, health monitoring, how to spot early signs of illness and how quickly to seea vet and a guide that tells you exactly what to do when when bringing home new piggies and settling them in etc.
You may want to bookmark the link, browse, read and re-read at need: Getting Started - Essential Information for New Owners

We also recommend that you double-check the gender with us, just to be on the safe side. Our Sexing Guide encourages our members to try and learn what exactly to look and feel for in the less obvious but much more gender divisive areas but we do offer a second opinion courtesy service to make sure that there are no unwelcome surprises. Baby boars need separating at 3 weeks or 250g of body weight, whichever comes first in order to prevent any mother-son or sibling pregnancies.
Illustrated Sexing Guide
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for the information! Would you recommend a particular type of hay for this age? Is Timothy hay a good choice?
 
Timothy is a good choice of hay but any grass hay is absolutely fine.
Personally mine get meadow hay and orchard hay.
 
jazzpiggie said:
Thank you so much for the information! Would you recommend a particular type of hay for this age? Is Timothy hay a good choice?
Click to expand...

Timothy, meadow or orchard hay or a mix of them is all fine. Timothy is easier digested but meadow hay contains different grasses and supports a wider range of digestive bacteria so I would recommend to not get too stuck on the 'ideal' food. It is the same with most foods; they have all got their individual pros and cons.

My piggies live on meadow hay and alwys have - the little baby in my avatar picture on the left lived to just short of her 8th birthday (Tegan Syndod 'Little Beautiful Surprise' 2011-19) and she never had any baby extras; she just eat what the group did once she and her mum joined it when she was 4 weeks old.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top