guinea pigs which dry food?

[starpatch]

Hi, so very excited have brought 2 guinea pigs home, have kept a number of guinea pigs before but not for 10 years so I am out of date. What is the recommended dry food now? Used to be gerty the guinea pig was good (with plenty of hay, grass every day and vegetables). Now it seems to be there is concern about their teeth if you give them something too nutritious? Which is the right one to buy? Also should I buy insurance or just keep money aside to cover vet fees?

many thanks
starpatch

I use Harrington's. As long as you have good quality hay with a vit c supplement ( they need vit c to be in their diet , by water drops or good vit c vegetables daily ) then pellets is a tiny proportion of there diet. The hay will keep teeth short and chew wood ( apple branches etc ) I use a log hide house they are free to much on.

I also used Asda's before ! And Burgess is also a good food .
Still same hay hay hay for teeth !
Have fun 👍🏻

Congratulations on your new piggies

What were your pigs eating before you got them? You (hopefully) have been given changeover food. If you want to change their diet , you need to gradually increase the food you want into the food they have (so 75%/25% then increase to 50-50 and so on) over a period of afew weeks.
Mine have mainly eaten Burgess Excell ( there are different flavours, one has Oregano/Mint which they like) and one of our sows had some Selective mixed in (lower calcium)

Nuggets rather than the muesli ( no picky bits to waste)

Mine eat the veg first, pick at the pellets and spend the rest of the time mooching through hay ( or ReadiGrass if I have some) and grass (cut or grazing )

Some guineas will have teeth problems no matter what you give them, they might have mis aligned jaws for example. Pigs like that will need regular vet treatment to reduce the teeth,
But otherwise plenty of chewing to keep them busy

You DO know that you can't post "I have piggies" and not put a picture ?

We have Burgess nuggets the mint one.
Tried the other one and they went on hunger strike ( cannot remember what the flavour was).
For eating hay they like Timothy hay and camomile hay. Currently they have a 5 a day hay - different bits in it, from the poundshop, I thought it sounded nice, they aren't too fussed

We also have the mixed dandelion/nettle/marigold leaves to eat .. poundstretcher do a fairly big cheap bag, oh course piggies only eat this under sufferance ... they prefer the dearer Rosewood brand stuff.
Whenever it is possible during the winter months we cut grass for them. DH also grows grass for them in seed trays for when the garden grass is poor.

NDN recently gave us some apple tree twigs he'd trimmed, Nessa especially loved these.

Oh and we have hay cookies, parsley bells and stickles ... that is without the salad, fruit and veg they daily scoff ... and the copious amounts of parsley they consume. Currently struggling for flat leaved parsley none in Tesco or Morrisons had to make special trip to Lidl today

I made a trip to Wilko yesterday (for parsley bells) and got two Wilko Foraging Nibble Boxes (baically it looks like a slab of dry turf [confused)

I will need to anchor it upright because if they have it flat in their cages they'll just sit on it and pee/pooh.

I try and buy Jolleys hay if I'm near the shop or The Range hay if I'm in town. The smaller bags of Jolleys hay (special offer) is handier for indoors when they don't need as much but we've found another pinecone !

Mine didn't like the 5-A-Day hay (I bought it when there was no regular hay) not nice to eat and too jaggy to sleep in (they are whingey little blighters , my pigs )

I won't touch P@H hay again, one of my pigs (the Himmy) got some weird lice after I bought this.

My ladies aren't too fussy on brands of food but are extremely critical of me should I dare to put the muesli type food in. They want plain pellets and nothing more.

If I've ever bad pig mum ran out of plain pellets and needed to give them muesli they knock the bowl over and spread the food out as far as they can

I get hay from a local pet food supplier, it's £1.10 for a big potato sack of gorgeous long hay. My pigs are also very judgey should they ever be given 'shop' hay which I find to be really stubby short pieces.

Congrats on getting your pigs, how lovely x