Baby Food As A Treat?

Mikknu

Mikknu

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Hi there.

I have a friend who has a wonderful pair of rats, and she recently recommended to me that I try Gerber baby food as a bonding treat/grooming treat. She lets them lick it off of her fingers. While I am skeptical of this, as rats are very different from guinea pigs, I did some looking into what's in their fruit/vegetable blends. The Apple & Blueberry blend has apples, blueberries, and Vitamin C only in it. That doesn't seem to be suspect, but I'm still wary of it.

Is this advisable for even rats, let alone guinea pigs?

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I don’t know anything about rats.
Sometimes with poorly piggies, then I have seen some give this kind of baby food, but I don’t see why it should be done regularly or as a treat even
 
My piggies bite my finger if they smell at all like food. I don't think piggies really do licking but I'm not sure. My boys love blueberries though so would probably like it whether it's good for them or not.
 
Mikknu said:
Hi there.

I have a friend who has a wonderful pair of rats, and she recently recommended to me that I try Gerber baby food as a bonding treat/grooming treat. She lets them lick it off of her fingers. While I am skeptical of this, as rats are very different from guinea pigs, I did some looking into what's in their fruit/vegetable blends. The Apple & Blueberry blend has apples, blueberries, and Vitamin C only in it. That doesn't seem to be suspect, but I'm still wary of it.

Is this advisable for even rats, let alone guinea pigs?

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I don't know anything about rats, but I wouldn't really give it to my girls as rats are different from guinea pigs and each type of animal has a different diet. Also, guinea pigs can get all their vitamin C from veggies so I just don't think this would be needed. Plus there are plenty of healthy treats out there designed for guinea pigs :)
 
I wouldn't use anything like this as it may lead to you being accidentally bitten when your fingers smell delicious.
It would be far better to cut up small pieces of fresh fruit and veg and hand feed these instead.

Also guinea pigs don't really need a lot of sugary treats, so better to stick to one or two fruit snacks and add in lots of other things like herbs and fresh greens to balance it out.
 
When I was syringe feeding I got some pure fruit and veg baby food and the poorly pig didn't like it but neither did the others. I was surprised. People used to use pea flakes for rewarding piggies but don't seem to hear about them now? Not sure if recommended.
 
Pea flakes are ok to be given as treats. if I personally prefer to use something like parsley or dill - given it’s a herb that is higher in calcium it is therefore not part of their daily diet, so feels more like a treat!


(To be clear purely for the sake of the thread if it came up on an internet search regarding syringe feeding, when syringe feeding, they still need a high fibre diet (so critical care or mushed up pellets), so baby food veg alone isn’t the correct thing to keep the system operating properly.)
 
Thank you all for your responses!

I definitely don't want bitten, I've heard of piggies biting through shirts before, and that doesn't sound very fun when applied to flesh! I'll make sure to be careful while feeding in general then, but thank you all for the warning. It's interesting to learn that this stuff has been used for syringe feeding before. I guess it's good to know that alternatives are out there, but I definitely won't try it with piggies.
 
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