How to Make Guinea Pig Food

How to Make Guinea Pig Food. Properly caring for your guinea pig means providing your furry friend with a clean habitat, fresh water, lots of love and a healthy diet. Guinea pig pellets are not the best food choice for the health of your guinea pig. It's a good idea to supplement their diet with a variety of pig-friendly foods. It's an even better idea to make their food on your own. Here's how.

Step 1

Introduce timothy hay to your guinea pig's diet. This is a staple food for a guinea pig and will help to wean them slowly off of the pellet food they've gotten used to. Buy timothy hay from a feed and garden store, or buy fresh timothy hay from a farmer. Generally, the greener the hay, the better it will be for your guinea pig.

Step 2

Make sure that your guinea pig gets its required 10 mg of vitamin C everyday. You can give them a supplement, or offer cabbage, kale, or even a bit of an orange to help them get what they need.

Step 3

Add in a mix of a little barley, wheat bran and oat bran to their diet. Nutrient-dense cereals and grains offer excellent fiber and nutrients for your guinea pig.

Step 4

Feed your guinea pig healthy leafy greens. Choose fresh parsley, collards, turnip greens, spinach, dandelion greens, watercress, or a little dill weed. Keep in mind that leafy greens act as a laxative. If you notice that your guinea pig develops a loose stool, diarrhea, or is having trouble digesting these greens, back off of them completely or feed less of them.

Step 5

Offer your guinea pig nuts and seeds very carefully. Never feed a guinea pig nuts or seeds in their shells. Your pig could easily choke on the shells and they are hard to digest. An alternative to nuts and seeds would be to just mix sunflower seed oil or a similar seed oil in with their grains a few times a week. Though nuts and seeds are good for your guinea pig, too much can lead to poor health and excessive weight gain.

Step 6

Give them fresh vegetables like green and red peppers, cucumber, broccoli and carrots. Vegetables like these with a higher water content are great for travel to prevent dehydration and offer good crunchy bits to your pig's daily diet. Fruits like apples (without the seeds, which are poisonous), apricots and raspberries are also good for your guinea pig on occasion as a treat.

Warnings

• Never feed a guinea pig rhubarb, apple seeds, potatoes or raw beans as these are all poisonous.
• Avoid feeding your pig iceberg lettuce as it contains little nutritional value.
• Do not feed a guinea pig seeds or nuts with the shells left on or celery stalks unless they are chopped into very small pieces, as these foods are a choking hazard.