Question about vitamin C?

[naguya]

So, I know guinea pigs do not produce vitamin C on their own and need a balanced daily diet to get it.

In my country, I have observed several people giving vitamin C in syringes daily to guinea pigs. Is this right? I always thought that through a good diet they could get enough vitamin C. No problems so far...

I give mine at morning, most of times, purple lettuce, escarole, chayote, cucumber and green bell pepper (sometimes I vary it during the week -1/2x times- with coriander or parsley). Hay all day. At night, red/yellow/orange bell pepper plus corn husks, before sleep time, pellets.

With a diet like this, is it really necessary to take vitamin C in a syringe every day?

 

[Piggies&buns]

It’s never recommended to give syringes of vitamin c to healthy piggies with a good balanced diet.
Doing so is a waste because additional vit c is excreted in the urine - you’d be paying for them to pee it straight out!
Signicantly, giving over and above their needs in vit c can cause health problems as their bodies get used to unnecessary high amounts of vit c. If that level then drops it then causes scurvy.

It is only recommended to give vit c supplements as a short two week course during a period of significant illness to help boost the immune system.

 

[Wiebke]

So, I know guinea pigs do not produce vitamin C on their own and need a balanced daily diet to get it.

In my country, I have observed several people giving vitamin C in syringes daily to guinea pigs. Is this right? I always thought that through a good diet they could get enough vitamin C. No problems so far...

I give mine at morning, most of times, purple lettuce, escarole, chayote, cucumber and green bell pepper (sometimes I vary it during the week -1/2x times- with coriander or parsley). Hay all day. At night, red/yellow/orange bell pepper plus corn husks, before sleep time, pellets.

With a diet like this, is it really necessary to take vitamin C in a syringe every day?

Hi

The problem with over-supplementation is that the body accustoms to the higher levels and ignores them. Then when the vitamin C level suddenly drops, it can lead to acute scurvy symptoms even though the actual levels are still above normal.

Most of the very rare scurvy cases we have seen on here have been from over-supplementation. Only a very few (less than a handful) have been true scurvy; mostly from neglect background intakes and perhaps one or two from illness/metabolic issues in older piggies but that on the background of thousands of piggies.
In case of an illness, it is much better to just give a 2-3 weeks vitamin C booster for best effect.

The over-supplementation comes from US recommendations who have traditionally more of a general culture of supplementing a diet - humans as well

None of our regular forum piggies on a supplement-free have ever been picked up for scurvy (about 2 cases excepted in 18 years) and we have most definitely not seen shorter average life spans.

 

[naguya]

It’s never recommended to give syringes of vitamin c to healthy piggies with a good balanced diet.
Doing so is a waste because additional vit c is excreted in the urine - you’d be paying for them to pee it straight out!
Signicantly, giving over and above their needs in vit c can cause health problems as their bodies get used to unnecessary high amounts of vit c. If that level then drops it then causes scurvy.

It is only recommended to give vit c supplements as a short two week course during a period of significant illness to help boost the immune system.

I see, this was a question I had for a long time, as I always see on Instagram in my country, people giving vitamin C through syringes. So I asked myself a question, isn't diet enough? Yesterday I posted a comment on a GP post asking why this and one of the people said it was "mandatory" to use vitamin C by syringe for them...

Thank you for clarifying!

 

[naguya]

Hi

The problem with over-supplementation is that the body accustoms to the higher levels and ignores them. Then when the vitamin C level suddenly drops, it can lead to acute scurvy symptoms even though the actual levels are still above normal.

Most of the very rare scurvy cases we have seen on here have been from over-supplementation. Only a very few (less than a handful) have been true scurvy; mostly from neglect background intakes and perhaps one or two from illness/metabolic issues in older piggies but that on the background of thousands of piggies.
In case of an illness, it is much better to just give a 2-3 weeks vitamin C booster for best effect.

The over-supplementation comes from US recommendations who have traditionally more of a general culture of supplementing a diet - humans as well

None of our regular forum piggies on a supplement-free have ever been picked up for scurvy (about 2 cases excepted in 18 years) and we have most definitely not seen shorter average life spans.

Thank you for answering.

I always had this doubt, I never gave vitamin C by syringe, but I started to notice that in my country, most people give vitamin C by syringe to them, so I questioned myself if I was doing the right thing using only greens with vitamin c on the diet.

I commented on an Instagram post about this, asking why, and some people replied that it was mandatory to give vitamin C by syringe, but since in my country animals like this are not "well cared for", I decided to ask here to fully clarify this doubt.

 

[Wiebke]

I see, this was a question I had for a long time, as I always see on Instagram in my country, people giving vitamin C through syringes. So I asked myself a question, isn't diet enough? Yesterday I posted a comment on a GP post asking why this and one of the people said it was "mandatory" to use vitamin C by syringe for them...

Thank you for clarifying!

Of course, most of us also feed pellets that are enriched with vitamin C and those of us with a little lawn have access to green grass for nearly all year round - growing grass is high in vitamin C and the reason why guinea pigs could switch off their vitamin C producing gene complex so there is vitamin C in pretty much any food they are eating.