Topic: guinea pig question

[Serephino]

We just got one a few days ago.  We have both pellets and timothy hay in there for him, as well as giving him a few fruits and veggies here and there.  He eats the veggies (loves carrots), and he munches on the hay when he comes out of his little den, but I don't see him eating the pellets.  Everything I've read said the pellets should make up the bulk of his diet.  Will living on veggies and timothy hay hurt him?

[Saffron]

Find out what he was being fed before you got it and switch to that. It's enough for him to be stressing out over moving to a new home, changing his diet at the same time would make it harder still.

If he doesn't like pellets it's not the end of the world, just make sure you try several brands before giving up and keep offering pellets in case he changes his mind. In the meantime make sure you're not feeding 'junk' food because they will always take the tasty junk before the nutritious pellet.

Edit: Could also be that his teeth are overgrown preventing him from eating properly. The vet can clip them down for you if that's the case.

[Serephino]

He eats the grass and the veggies just fine.  We gave him the food the came with the cage, but I'll call up Pet Co and see what brand they were giving him.  Thanks.

[Beguile's Mistress]

Be sure to give him things to gnaw on to keep the teeth from growing out too far.  The pellets would help with that but if he isn't eating them there are sticks you can get.

[Serephino]

Ugh, Pet Co won't tell us, at least the person I talked to on the phone wouldn't.  He said to take him to the vet for a digestion issue.  We called the vet, and the vet said to just try a different kind of food since the little guy is eating, just not the pellets.  We have chew toys for him too.  The guy at Pet Co we talked to when we bought him made sure we had everything.  I couldn't believe how expensive it all was. 

[Beguile's Mistress]

*hugs you*  They are expensive and I wasn't sure if you knew about their teeth.

If trying the new food doesn't work you might want to cut back on the other things either feeding them to him less often or in smaller quantities until he takes to the pellet foot.

Good luck.

[Lord Drake]

Okay take this with a grain of salt but a friend of mine once told me that carrots are like chocolate to guinea pigs and if they can have them, they will eat them in preference of anything else. Actually too many carrots will damage them.

You could need to force them to eat something else by removing the carrots and most of the other veggies and see if they eat the pellets when they are hungry enough. Exactly as BeMi said.