Tips and Info about your pet

Pet Guide Small Animal - Care

In this section you will find valuable information about your cherished pet. Please select the required guide to learn more about your pet and find many helpful tips.

The main thing is hay

A lot of nibbling keeps your guinea pig fit

You cannot provide enough hay for guinea pigs. They love it as litter, starter, snack, main course, desert and bedtime sweets. Most of all, it should be fresh, nice and green and sweet smelling. The piggies like the crispy stalks for breakfast – best served only with fresh water and a carrot and without green fodder. Otherwise, they ignore the hay and concentrate on the more tender green fodder. But they are supposed to chew a lot and produce saliva to stimulate their digestion. That is why hay is so important. It is best to put a large heap of hay in the middle of the cage so that stocks don't go down that quickly. A little bit of straw can also be included: guinea pigs need something to chew all day long so that their permanently growing teeth wear down – and so that they have something to "work on". A popular occupational therapy are also fresh branches from untreated fruit and hazelnut trees given weekly. Hard bread has too many carbohydrates and therefore is not a suitable chewing material. Leaves and branches from nature have to be clean and, if possible, not picked from the side of the road and have to be dry without raindrops or dew. Guinea pigs should get three meals a day. In nature, they are on tour all day long in the search of food. After a breakfast of hay and water, lunch should be green fodder. Vegetables and fruit should always be served washed, dried and at room temperature.

The menu includes fennel tubers, parsley, dandelion, lucerne, carrot leaves and nettles. In the evening, you serve some grains, carrot, a piece of sweet apple and hay again. Do not feed cabbage leaves in any case, they cause flatulence. Guinea pigs should always have access to fresh, not too cold water, in a bowl which is rinsed daily without detergent. A salt and calcium licking stone provides minerals and trace elements to the animal. You must never change a guinea pig's food suddenly. They can have terrible flatulence. You should therefore carefully introduce small amounts of the new food to the menu over several days.