Are the food guide pellet measurements wrong on here or am I misunderstanding something?

[h.h.lovecraft]

In the "Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets" guide it states, "The current recommendation is to please not feed more than 1 tablespoon or 1/8 cup of pellets per adult piggy per day (15 ml by volume, ca. 15-20g by weight)", but but 1/8 cup= 2 Tbs = 30 ml=? Grams vary greatly depending on the size of the pellet, but 15-20 grams seems much more than 1 Tablespoon in general.

The general consensus on here is that 1 tablespoon OR 1/8 cup per pig is enough, but 1/8 cup does not equal 1 tablespoon? People on the forum have been telling me that I am giving them too many pellets as 2 tablespoon is too much, but 2 tablespoons of my pellets only amounts to around 8-8.5 grams, which is very far from the "15-20g by weight" as stated in the food guide. My pellets (Versele Laga Complete) are a little long so I guess that accounts for some of the gram difference, but it is still a rather large difference. The guide is tremendously helpful and I am glad it's there, but I am just confused on the pellet part as most of the internet agrees 1/8 cup of pellets is a good amount for one pig, so I have been feeding two tablespoon each because that is 1/8 cup.

 

[Swissgreys]

I can't answer your specific question about the feeding guides (that would require the expertise of @Wiebke ), but what I would say is it isn't something to over think in my opinion.

The idea of the food guide is to give people an idea of the sort of amounts they should be feeding, and take away the option of a permanently refilled bowl of unlimited pellets.
The rest comes down to common sense.

When my piggies were younger I did limit their pellets to a tablespoon a day, I monitored their weight and they all did fine, and looked healthy and were active.
Now Ruby is five years old I do feed her slightly more pellets as I find this is necessary for keeping condition on her.
She has a huge cage and is surprisingly active too.
I don't weigh the amounts, and don't allow unlimited pellets, but am definetly feeding closer to 2 tablespoons than 1 these days.
So there has to be some common sense and flexibility too.
Some piggies will be less active and require less and some may need more.

Feed you piggies a fixed amount for a few weeks and monitor their weight to work out if you have the balance right.
Then adjust accordingly.

 

[Siikibam]

I find it best to go by tablespoon rather than cup or weight. You are correct in that pellets bath in size etc so it’s not a one size fits all in terms of weight or cup. I would use a tablespoon, I feel that would be a better measure.

I also can’t comment on the feeding guide. Don’t overthink too much though. It can be a bit of a minefield though

 

[PigglePuggle]

Yes dont overthink things, I think the inclusion of a rough guide in cups is to aid our American members... most of us are in the UK and dont use cups, just grams or spoons!

The exact amount is mostly a matter of personal preference, pellet type, and also your piggies weight, age and health. My piggies are mostly robust 3-5 year olds and I only feed 5g of pellets per piggy per day. This rather started when I adopted 2 very fat ladies who had been over fed by their previous owner! Most people feed more, 15-30g perhaps. Some people go pellet free altogether. Pellets are high in calcium and usually the first thing to cut down or cut out for a piggy prone to bladder stones.
So dont overthink things, be guided by your piggies and also what other foods they eat- personally I like to really minimise pellets and allow a few porridge oats and a bit more treat veg and higher calcium veg in the diet, for variety- but some people prefer the certainty of the guaranteed nutritional content of the pellets!

 

[Wiebke]

I have included the 1/8 cup measure as the currently widely used recommendation in the US, which is mainly a soft water country; our UK recommendation (which is mainly a hard water, i.e. high calcium tap water country) is a bit lower and uses tablespoons and/or weight guidelines more than the volume measures common in the USA - it can all get a bit confusing, especially with the range of different pellets. But basically as long as you are somewhere within that area of giving pellets, you are fine. If you live in a soft water area, then the US recommendation will be more useful; for a hard water area, it would be better to stick to the lower limit.
However, these are just rough guidelines. Some of our members with bladder stone/urinary tract problems piggies usually want to go as low as possible; others prefer to feed more.

You can feed a totally pellet free diet, replacing the pellets with dry forage. Pellets and veg/fresh or dry herbs are both basically filling the role that supplementary wild forage used to have to have to provide trace elements that are not or not enough supplied by the hay/fresh grass they have evolved to mainly live on. Pellets are the most optional part of a piggy diet. What is worth to know is that a piggy will eat proportionally a lot less hay the more pellets you feed because they contain comparatively little fibre but plenty of fillers, meaning that the crucial chewing back teeth at the back are ground down less over time (it is the very abrasive silica in grass and hay fibre that they need), which can cause longer term dental problems. While good quality pellets are enriched with vitamin C (as are many other foods in a guinea pig diet and in recovery formulas), they do not supply all nutrients needed (like magnesium, for instance).

The closer a look you take, the more complicated and complex diet gets.

 

[h.h.lovecraft]

I have included the 1/8 cup measure as the currently widely used recommendation in the US, which is mainly a soft water country; our UK recommendation (which is mainly a hard water, i.e. high calcium tap water country) is a bit lower and uses tablespoons and/or weight guidelines more than the volume measures common in the USA - it can all get a bit confusing, especially with the range of different pellets. But basically as long as you are somewhere within that area of giving pellets, you are fine. If you live in a soft water area, then the US recommendation will be more useful; for a hard water area, it would be better to stick to the lower limit.

However, these are just rough guidelines. Some of our members with bladder stone/urinary tract problems piggies usually want to go as low as possible; others prefer to feed more.

You can feed a totally pellet free diet, replacing the pellets with dry forage. Pellets and veg/fresh or dry herbs are both basically filling the role that supplementary wild forage for trace elements and other nutrients that are not in grass/hay used to have.

Thank you for the clarification! I know I am over thinking this part a bit as others said, I was just wondering if I had something wrong because I thought I was calculating it right. I've seen the phrase "1/8 cup or 1 Tablespoon" multiple times now on various sites and it makes it sound like they are the same measurement. Since I am a new guinea pig owner, I'm measuring all of my stuff until I feel good eyeballing it, which is what prompted me to ask the question. I am American, but I live in Germany, so I look at US guinea pig pages, German pages, and UK pages, which often all give different amounts and measurements, so it certainly can get confusing!

 

[Merab]

I think this has been helpful.
So often a question asked by one member answers another’s concern and we all learn a bit more.

Thank you for asking the question @h.h.lovecraft

 

[Wiebke]

Thank you for the clarification! I know I am over thinking this part a bit as others said, I was just wondering if I had something wrong because I thought I was calculating it right. I've seen the phrase "1/8 cup or 1 Tablespoon" multiple times now on various sites and it makes it sound like they are the same measurement. Since I am a new guinea pig owner, I'm measuring all of my stuff until I feel good eyeballing it, which is what prompted me to ask the question. I am American, but I live in Germany, so I look at US guinea pig pages, German pages, and UK pages, which often all give different amounts and measurements, so it certainly can get confusing!

I have clarified the measurement issue in the guide.

 

[Black piggies]

Very interesting. Do piggies in the States get less interstitial cystitis?

 

[Wiebke]

Very interesting. Do piggies in the States get less interstitial cystitis?

Interstitial cystitis is NOT tied to the calcium intake but does have other causes and contributing factors which are not yet really known. Interstitial cystitis does happen in the USA as well as in Europe. It is more likely linked to the massively increased commercial mass breeding of guinea pigs and the stress it causes to the animals. The rise in sterile IC and the increase in pet chain breeding have happened over the same period. There is likely a link but not one you would expect.

Neither is UTI - this is caused by faecal bacteria that have got into the urinary tract once, usually by another immune system lowering trigger factor, like a damp cold lawn/ground or outside hutch.

Only stones/sludge and bacterial cystitis (which is generally the result of damage/trauma to the bladder walls from a stone or sludge) are tied to the wrong calcium balance - and that can happen anywere in the world. It is also worth noting that feeding a diet too low in calcium can be as long term damaging as a high too in it.

It is also worth noting that a general good diet is overall health boosting and life prolonging but you should ideally not get bogged down too much in the smallest of details. The food guide is there to help newbies to put their own diet together within a reasonable and long term sustainable area but there is still plenty of individual wiggle room.
The recommended amounts are there to replace the previous extremely unhelpful measures like 'a bit' or 'a handful' or 'occasionally' that were all that was around when I started the diet guide at first. I try to keep it updated but I am not a trained nutritional expert; what the guide reflects are our practical experiences on here.