- Water
- Hay and grass
- Veg and fresh herbs
- Wild or garden forage
- Pellets
- Treats
- Where to shop?
- Saving up for emergency vet fees while you can
Money will be getting very tight for many of us; and that will also mean that a growing number of us need to think twice about how we feed our guinea pigs on a still good and long term health promoting diet that helps to keep our food bills and also any vet cost down.
This is our normally recommended general diet, which looks at diet as a whole and in detail at every food group. The advice and information in there in terms of what should be fed in which proportion still applies but there are are plenty of tweaks that you can make to save money without compromising on your guinea pigs' health and quality of life.
I would still recommend to read and bookmark this guide: Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets
Here are our practical tips for when you are running out of supplies and can't get hold of food immediately: Ill / Self-isolating and Running Out Of Piggy Food?
But there are actually lots of ways you can make savings without compromising on your guinea pigs' quality of life. In the following I am going through all food groups in detail with practical tips. You may not be able to implement all of them, depending on where you live and your work/personal commitments but there are some things that everybody CAN do and actually improve on your guinea pigs' health and longevity.
Water
Filtering your water is long term cheaper than buying low calcium bottled water unless you have a guinea pig that has existing bladder stone issues. It is not just the calcium but also minerals in the water that can contribute to the build up of stone. Especially in hard water areas the majority of calcium comes via the water and your pellets and not so much your veg.
Please be aware that how much a piggy drinks naturally varies enormously; you cannot make them drink more. You also need to be aware that the more fluid you feed in veg form, the less water your piggy will drink.
Hay and grass
Hay and fresh grass should make at least three quarters of what your piggy eats in a day. That you cannot cut down on. The digestive process with two runs through the gut is very much laid out for breaking down the highly nutritious grass fibre and the growth rate in the crucial grinding back teeth (the incisors at the front are self-sharpening in a balanced dental system) has evolved against the highly abrasive silica in any grass fibre. But you can certainly bring your expenses down.
Hay
While timothy hay is highly recommended, your piggies can still live an equally long and healthy life on cheaper meadow or orchard hay; my own piggies have lived a healthy, long life up to 8-9 years without any timothy hay long before it was being sold in the shops in the last decade.
Look for the best compromise in terms of quality and price; imported hay may not always be the cheapest and independent online hay providers may have better bargains. You can also stretch your timothy hay by mixing it with other cheaper hay varieties.
What you need to be aware of is that guinea pigs and rabbits should be ideally fed first cut hay while horses need second cut; when considering whether it is cheaper to get hay from a local equine provider or farmer, it is something to keep in mind.
A Comprehensive Hay Guide for Guinea Pigs (incl. providers in several countries)
Grass
Fresh growing grass is actually rich in vitamin C; it is also a very good renewable food source that can help you cut down on how much hay you are feeding (you should still offer hay at all times, though). You can stretch your hay by growing grass in pots or windowsill boxes if needed - and you can use discarded second-hand containers if you haven't got a garden.
Please follow the tips on how to introduce grass, how to grow and feed safe chemical-free grass (there are no untreated grass seed these days) and what to be aware of when you forage for grass (poisonous dog/fox pee!) in this link here: Feeding Grass And Preparing Your Piggies For Lawn Time
When having piggies outside, you need to be aware of the risks from both cold ground (don't put indoors piggies out unless the ground in warm and dry to your own bare feet for 5 minutes) and from heatwaves - sun-heated breezed can kill piggies even in the shade.
Hot Weather Management, Heat Strokes and Fly Strike
Bamboo grown in a pot (since it is a thug in a garden border) is giant grass and can be safely fed to guinea pigs. It is another good cut-and-come resource and enrichment source if you do not have access to a garden.
Freeze-dried ready grass is very rich and higher in calcium (due to the evaporated water, as in any dried forage); it should be fed circumspectly. It CANNOT replace hay or fresh grass for any length of time.
Veg and fresh herbs
This is another area where you can make major savings; especially over the summer months.
A good diet should be preferably green and leafy since it replaces the supplementary role of wild forage. It should be ideally a mix of something high in trace elements and vitamins and something high in water content (like cucumber and lettuce) to ensure good urination to help minimise the risk of stones.
Forget about expensive fruit; they should be at the best only an occasional treat anyway. Wild guinea pigs encounter fresh fruit only very rarely indeed, so don't waste money on what is not needed and should be only an occasional treat in small amounts at the best of times. Piggies get the same nutrients from other cheaper foods that are less high in sugars and acid and that are also much more environmentally friendly.
Peppers and tomatoes can also be safely left out of a diet. As can root veg like carrots (too fattening), corn (unless in season and then it is the whole cob) and any grain based foods.
You CANNOT feed frozen or tinned foods!
Lettuce can be grown at home as a cut and come crop in windowsill boxes. As can fresh herbs, which provide more vitamin C and other trace elements in a small measure. When buying from a shop, opt for plain whole Romaine/Cos lettuce rather than a salad bag.
Greens or Spring greens (collard greens in the USA) are cheap and make, if fed once or twice weekly, a good source of vitamin C, magnesium anmd some trace elements. They are comparatively high in calcium but there is no food high in magnesium that is not also higher in calcium. It is even safe to feed at one 1 inch strip per piggy about every 2-3 days on a reduced calcium diet with filtered water and reduced pellets; the same as you can feed any kale in a small quantity a bit more often when you filter water and reduce your pellet intake. Just feed only one of them because they belong to the same food group.
Feed a little fresh pepper and tomato when you cook with them for yourself whenever suitable but please do not feed your piggies just on peelings of root veg and scraps.
Try to grow chard leaves in a pot or your garden; they are good for your piggies but you won't find them in a supermarket.
You can regrow carrot greens from carrot tops put in a shallow water dish but please be aware that they are high in calcium and should be treated as a herb (a little every now and then) and not as a regular veg. The same goes for celery leaf plants.
You can also regrow celery stalks from putting the strunk into some shallow water.
Cucumber (and as a back-up celery, which is not quite as good as higher in oxalates) is a good source of water for those guinea pigs that are not good water drinkers and a good source of fluid in hot weather as it heats up more slowly than water in a bottle. It should still stay on as part of a piggy diet.
Wild or garden forage
Love your dandelions (all parts are edible), wild strawberries and other weeds that can be fed to guinea pigs! Learn about what you can feed safely as this means you have to spend less money on veg during the spring and summer months.
Feeding forage also means that you are actually switching to a healthier and more varied diet for your piggies because you are actually feeding a much wider range of trace elements that you will find in enriched pellets.
Foraging is also a weekend activity that is good for your own mental health when you go a walk and come back with some piggy food...
Please always keep in mind that fresh dog/fox pee is toxic and can kill. When out in public places, you alway need to keep in mind that it could have been sprayed so be careful and always thoroughtly wash and rinse any forage that could have been in contact with pesticides, dogs or foxes or is growing along a road.
You can actually learn to dry your own extra forage for the cold and dark half of the year. Please be aware that any dried food is higher in calcium content in terms of weight and volume because it is only the water but not the calcium that is removed in the drying process.
Wild UK forage for guinea pigs
Safe wild weeds/plants you can feed your piggies
Guinea pigs: your day-to-day guide | Pet advice | Wood Green
Pellets
Pellets are the part of the diet that is actually expendable and can be replaced by fresh or dry forage; because that is the role in the diet it has taken over since the 1950ies.
Any pellets, even the ones with no added calcium, are actually much higher in calcium weight by weight than the veg highest in calcium, kale (we have done the calculations). Even the best products are still much lower in fibre and high in calorific filler products.
Most people overfeed on pellets and are not aware that the recommendations on the labels are formulated to replace most fresh veg and that of course no company will ever recommend using as little of their own product as possible!
Reducing the amount of pellets to 1 tablespoon per piggy per day is actually not just a saving on cost but also life-prolonging for your guinea pigs because your piggies will eat quite a bit more hay for dental and gut health for every pellet you feed less.
When switching to a pellet-free diet, I would recommend that you keep the ratio between watery veg and dry forage, especially during the autumn/winter months in order to incourage good urination.
Pellets are one area where you can really save money and actually do something good for your piggies!
PLEASE do NOT feed cheaper rabbit pellets instead. They are not reinforced with vitamin C and have a different nutrient balance than the one guinea pig require. Rabbit pellets can (and sadly do) lead to scurvy and longer term malnutrition. It is better to leave out pellets altogether and supplement with forage instead.
Treats
Forget about buying expensive and mostly unhealthy pet shop treats. Rather than giving extra treats, concentrate on making feeding time enrichment time for you piggies!
Use cheap carrots rather as a special treat in a small amount whenever you cook with them; for a guinea pig, a carrot is like a bar of chocolate. But it makes the perfect cheap treat every now and then.
Also forget about expensive pet shop treats; cheap brown paper, paper bags (with any handles cut through) or cardboard boxed can provide lots of enrichment fun when you wrap up the dinner or make them work for their hay or some special forage treat.
Lots of ideas on how you can make dinner time fun time: Enrichment Ideas for Guinea Pigs
Where to shop?
Pet shops are rarely the most cost effective place for supplies. Look online wether you can find your products more cheaply and order in bulk. Also look for small scale local hay/equine providers and see whether they have cheaper suitable hay.
If you can, do your shopping later in the afternoon when unsold fresh products are being down-marked in supermarkets. Look for cheaper veg in food markets or in local grocery or farm shops. Think about using seasonal foods.
Saving for emergency vet fees while you still can
While you still have some financial wiggle room, please set aside some of the economies you can make to ensure that you can get your guinea pig to the vets for any illness that can be easily cured with an antibotic, for painkillers or to be able to afford to have your piggy put to sleep if you cannot afford an operation or any more complicated longer term treatment.
Keep in mind that that vet fees are also going to rise massively as electricity bills and higher production cost of medications will hit the clinics - and those are the two areas which are actually the biggest financial factors in running a vet clinic. Salaries are generally very low; you do not become a vet or a vet nurse to get rich!
Here are some helpful first aid tips on how you can improvise at first until you can get hold of the more expensive stuff whenever it is really needed: First Aid Kit: Easily available non-medication support products for an emergency
- Hay and grass
- Veg and fresh herbs
- Wild or garden forage
- Pellets
- Treats
- Where to shop?
- Saving up for emergency vet fees while you can
Money will be getting very tight for many of us; and that will also mean that a growing number of us need to think twice about how we feed our guinea pigs on a still good and long term health promoting diet that helps to keep our food bills and also any vet cost down.
This is our normally recommended general diet, which looks at diet as a whole and in detail at every food group. The advice and information in there in terms of what should be fed in which proportion still applies but there are are plenty of tweaks that you can make to save money without compromising on your guinea pigs' health and quality of life.
I would still recommend to read and bookmark this guide: Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets
Here are our practical tips for when you are running out of supplies and can't get hold of food immediately: Ill / Self-isolating and Running Out Of Piggy Food?
But there are actually lots of ways you can make savings without compromising on your guinea pigs' quality of life. In the following I am going through all food groups in detail with practical tips. You may not be able to implement all of them, depending on where you live and your work/personal commitments but there are some things that everybody CAN do and actually improve on your guinea pigs' health and longevity.
Water
Filtering your water is long term cheaper than buying low calcium bottled water unless you have a guinea pig that has existing bladder stone issues. It is not just the calcium but also minerals in the water that can contribute to the build up of stone. Especially in hard water areas the majority of calcium comes via the water and your pellets and not so much your veg.
Please be aware that how much a piggy drinks naturally varies enormously; you cannot make them drink more. You also need to be aware that the more fluid you feed in veg form, the less water your piggy will drink.
Hay and grass
Hay and fresh grass should make at least three quarters of what your piggy eats in a day. That you cannot cut down on. The digestive process with two runs through the gut is very much laid out for breaking down the highly nutritious grass fibre and the growth rate in the crucial grinding back teeth (the incisors at the front are self-sharpening in a balanced dental system) has evolved against the highly abrasive silica in any grass fibre. But you can certainly bring your expenses down.
Hay
While timothy hay is highly recommended, your piggies can still live an equally long and healthy life on cheaper meadow or orchard hay; my own piggies have lived a healthy, long life up to 8-9 years without any timothy hay long before it was being sold in the shops in the last decade.
Look for the best compromise in terms of quality and price; imported hay may not always be the cheapest and independent online hay providers may have better bargains. You can also stretch your timothy hay by mixing it with other cheaper hay varieties.
What you need to be aware of is that guinea pigs and rabbits should be ideally fed first cut hay while horses need second cut; when considering whether it is cheaper to get hay from a local equine provider or farmer, it is something to keep in mind.
A Comprehensive Hay Guide for Guinea Pigs (incl. providers in several countries)
Grass
Fresh growing grass is actually rich in vitamin C; it is also a very good renewable food source that can help you cut down on how much hay you are feeding (you should still offer hay at all times, though). You can stretch your hay by growing grass in pots or windowsill boxes if needed - and you can use discarded second-hand containers if you haven't got a garden.
Please follow the tips on how to introduce grass, how to grow and feed safe chemical-free grass (there are no untreated grass seed these days) and what to be aware of when you forage for grass (poisonous dog/fox pee!) in this link here: Feeding Grass And Preparing Your Piggies For Lawn Time
When having piggies outside, you need to be aware of the risks from both cold ground (don't put indoors piggies out unless the ground in warm and dry to your own bare feet for 5 minutes) and from heatwaves - sun-heated breezed can kill piggies even in the shade.
Hot Weather Management, Heat Strokes and Fly Strike
Bamboo grown in a pot (since it is a thug in a garden border) is giant grass and can be safely fed to guinea pigs. It is another good cut-and-come resource and enrichment source if you do not have access to a garden.
Freeze-dried ready grass is very rich and higher in calcium (due to the evaporated water, as in any dried forage); it should be fed circumspectly. It CANNOT replace hay or fresh grass for any length of time.
Veg and fresh herbs
This is another area where you can make major savings; especially over the summer months.
A good diet should be preferably green and leafy since it replaces the supplementary role of wild forage. It should be ideally a mix of something high in trace elements and vitamins and something high in water content (like cucumber and lettuce) to ensure good urination to help minimise the risk of stones.
Forget about expensive fruit; they should be at the best only an occasional treat anyway. Wild guinea pigs encounter fresh fruit only very rarely indeed, so don't waste money on what is not needed and should be only an occasional treat in small amounts at the best of times. Piggies get the same nutrients from other cheaper foods that are less high in sugars and acid and that are also much more environmentally friendly.
Peppers and tomatoes can also be safely left out of a diet. As can root veg like carrots (too fattening), corn (unless in season and then it is the whole cob) and any grain based foods.
You CANNOT feed frozen or tinned foods!
Lettuce can be grown at home as a cut and come crop in windowsill boxes. As can fresh herbs, which provide more vitamin C and other trace elements in a small measure. When buying from a shop, opt for plain whole Romaine/Cos lettuce rather than a salad bag.
Greens or Spring greens (collard greens in the USA) are cheap and make, if fed once or twice weekly, a good source of vitamin C, magnesium anmd some trace elements. They are comparatively high in calcium but there is no food high in magnesium that is not also higher in calcium. It is even safe to feed at one 1 inch strip per piggy about every 2-3 days on a reduced calcium diet with filtered water and reduced pellets; the same as you can feed any kale in a small quantity a bit more often when you filter water and reduce your pellet intake. Just feed only one of them because they belong to the same food group.
Feed a little fresh pepper and tomato when you cook with them for yourself whenever suitable but please do not feed your piggies just on peelings of root veg and scraps.
Try to grow chard leaves in a pot or your garden; they are good for your piggies but you won't find them in a supermarket.
You can regrow carrot greens from carrot tops put in a shallow water dish but please be aware that they are high in calcium and should be treated as a herb (a little every now and then) and not as a regular veg. The same goes for celery leaf plants.
You can also regrow celery stalks from putting the strunk into some shallow water.
Cucumber (and as a back-up celery, which is not quite as good as higher in oxalates) is a good source of water for those guinea pigs that are not good water drinkers and a good source of fluid in hot weather as it heats up more slowly than water in a bottle. It should still stay on as part of a piggy diet.
Wild or garden forage
Love your dandelions (all parts are edible), wild strawberries and other weeds that can be fed to guinea pigs! Learn about what you can feed safely as this means you have to spend less money on veg during the spring and summer months.
Feeding forage also means that you are actually switching to a healthier and more varied diet for your piggies because you are actually feeding a much wider range of trace elements that you will find in enriched pellets.
Foraging is also a weekend activity that is good for your own mental health when you go a walk and come back with some piggy food...
Please always keep in mind that fresh dog/fox pee is toxic and can kill. When out in public places, you alway need to keep in mind that it could have been sprayed so be careful and always thoroughtly wash and rinse any forage that could have been in contact with pesticides, dogs or foxes or is growing along a road.
You can actually learn to dry your own extra forage for the cold and dark half of the year. Please be aware that any dried food is higher in calcium content in terms of weight and volume because it is only the water but not the calcium that is removed in the drying process.
Wild UK forage for guinea pigs
Safe wild weeds/plants you can feed your piggies
Guinea pigs: your day-to-day guide | Pet advice | Wood Green
Pellets
Pellets are the part of the diet that is actually expendable and can be replaced by fresh or dry forage; because that is the role in the diet it has taken over since the 1950ies.
Any pellets, even the ones with no added calcium, are actually much higher in calcium weight by weight than the veg highest in calcium, kale (we have done the calculations). Even the best products are still much lower in fibre and high in calorific filler products.
Most people overfeed on pellets and are not aware that the recommendations on the labels are formulated to replace most fresh veg and that of course no company will ever recommend using as little of their own product as possible!
Reducing the amount of pellets to 1 tablespoon per piggy per day is actually not just a saving on cost but also life-prolonging for your guinea pigs because your piggies will eat quite a bit more hay for dental and gut health for every pellet you feed less.
When switching to a pellet-free diet, I would recommend that you keep the ratio between watery veg and dry forage, especially during the autumn/winter months in order to incourage good urination.
Pellets are one area where you can really save money and actually do something good for your piggies!
PLEASE do NOT feed cheaper rabbit pellets instead. They are not reinforced with vitamin C and have a different nutrient balance than the one guinea pig require. Rabbit pellets can (and sadly do) lead to scurvy and longer term malnutrition. It is better to leave out pellets altogether and supplement with forage instead.
Treats
Forget about buying expensive and mostly unhealthy pet shop treats. Rather than giving extra treats, concentrate on making feeding time enrichment time for you piggies!
Use cheap carrots rather as a special treat in a small amount whenever you cook with them; for a guinea pig, a carrot is like a bar of chocolate. But it makes the perfect cheap treat every now and then.
Also forget about expensive pet shop treats; cheap brown paper, paper bags (with any handles cut through) or cardboard boxed can provide lots of enrichment fun when you wrap up the dinner or make them work for their hay or some special forage treat.
Lots of ideas on how you can make dinner time fun time: Enrichment Ideas for Guinea Pigs
Where to shop?
Pet shops are rarely the most cost effective place for supplies. Look online wether you can find your products more cheaply and order in bulk. Also look for small scale local hay/equine providers and see whether they have cheaper suitable hay.
If you can, do your shopping later in the afternoon when unsold fresh products are being down-marked in supermarkets. Look for cheaper veg in food markets or in local grocery or farm shops. Think about using seasonal foods.
Saving for emergency vet fees while you still can
While you still have some financial wiggle room, please set aside some of the economies you can make to ensure that you can get your guinea pig to the vets for any illness that can be easily cured with an antibotic, for painkillers or to be able to afford to have your piggy put to sleep if you cannot afford an operation or any more complicated longer term treatment.
Keep in mind that that vet fees are also going to rise massively as electricity bills and higher production cost of medications will hit the clinics - and those are the two areas which are actually the biggest financial factors in running a vet clinic. Salaries are generally very low; you do not become a vet or a vet nurse to get rich!
Here are some helpful first aid tips on how you can improvise at first until you can get hold of the more expensive stuff whenever it is really needed: First Aid Kit: Easily available non-medication support products for an emergency