Question about hay and feeding.

SSLee

Post   » Fri Mar 29, 2019 1:25 pm


My piggies love carrot, escarole, endive and radicchio but hate brussel sprouts and butternut squash. I am lucky in that we have access to fresh vegetables easily, which include supermarkets, farmer markets, Asian, and Latino produce markets. Recently I discovered chayote, kohlrabi, and yu choy from the Asian markets that I buy for my elderly parent weekly are also acceptable to feed the piggies, which they liked. We can get fresh corn throughout the year but I associate it as a summer vegetable only. Last year I didn't realize that corn was available all year round and froze a large quantity of corn husks which I'm still doling out. 1/5 of the office freezer is taken up with corn husks (my manager is tolerant of my piggy supplies, probably because his family fosters dogs ). I feed veggies for dinner, wheatgrass as evening snack, and refresh the hay. In the morning, the girls get one grape tomato and blue berry, pellets, and more hay before I leave for work. My piggies eat better than me when it comes to veggies. I depend on Trader Joe salads as I am too lazy to prepare them myself.

MorganM

Post   » Tue Apr 02, 2019 9:25 am


Yeah; that's pretty normal with the hay. We have one basket that is big enough to easily hold both pigs. Then there's a bin up in the loft. They love sitting in it in the basket, digging around in it and eating... some of it =P The bin they tend to eat more of it... probably because there's less pee on it! I just consider the basket more of a fun thing to play in but they can also munch on. The bin up in the loft is where they really chow down. Everything I've read says to give them limitless hay... and so we do.

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M1dn1ght

Post   » Tue Apr 02, 2019 10:45 am


My two boys tend to like bitter greens. I get organic dandelion greens from the supermarket and they inhale those - which is good because they are chockful of vitamin C. They love endive, arugula, and escarole. They also eat the red and green leaf lettuce, but they really love the greens that are more on the bitter side.

I switched them from timothy hay to orchard grass hay because we have allergies in the household. It took them a little while to adjust, but they eat all of it now. I find that there is some incidental litter in the form of yanked hay on the floor of the cage, but they pretty much clean up what's in their hay rack. There are no seed heads in the hay I get them (Oxbow).

For veggies, I get those baggies of mini sweet peppers and give them each one every day. They also get the cucumber peels from when I prepare my daughter's lunch and a few berries of some kind for a treat. I try to switch it up every day so they don't get bored with it. They each get a cup in the morning and then I sometimes toss in some clean kitchen scraps - like when I'm cutting up broccoli and I tear the leaves off the stalk. They love those because - again - bitter.

RomeAndSmores1

Post   » Mon Apr 08, 2019 9:59 pm


Sorry to sound like a broken record, but yes, it is Absolutley normal and okay for them to do that. My girls specifically sift through all the hay and eat the seed heads almost exclusively, and then pull the rest out and sleep on it like a Mat. I only sometimes see them eating the hay off the ground, but that’s only when it hasn’t been peed on.

They also eat the smaller strands too, but yeah, that’s normal

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Tue Apr 09, 2019 8:49 am


Keep in mind that the seed heads do not wear down the teeth as much as their eating the long strands of hay. So another good reason for going with a quality leafy (vs. seedy) hay is to help their teeth, along with their gut.

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