Saturday, January 5, 2013

fruits and veggies for your guinea pigs

hey everyone! well if you love your guinea pigs, like me :), you would know that guinea pigs love fruits and veggies!
today I was thinking, "it takes a long time to prepare food for my guinea pigs!" (I wash it and chop it up) so I had an idea! why not prepare the food ahead of time so that I can just grab it and go when I feed them? I decided to plan ahead and put their fruits and veggies in Ziploc bags in the fridge! guinea pigs need at least 1-2 cups of fruits and veggies a day (I give it to them every other day) I would normally use romaine lettuce and sometimes apples, but this is what I had today...
                                                          I started with celery....

                                      I took all the sticks off of the stalk and washed each one.
                           we get organic fruits and veggies so they some times have dirt on them

                                                   I put a piece on a cutting board

                                                                checked it for bad spots

                                                      I cut of the bad parts (brown yucky stuff)
                                         and sliced it in half so that it would fit in the Ziploc bags
 
 
                      I then labeled the bags with my guinea pigs names (this is optional, I just did it because I didn't want my family members to use their food)
                                             then I did the same thing with the carrots
                                 checked them for bad spots and sliced them in half
 I usually cut off 1 carrot slice for each guinea pig, so they can munch on them while I clean their cages
 
   and it is very important that guinea pigs get their vitamin C and oranges are full of it! so I cut the orange in half and then in fourths and divided them up into the Ziploc bags.
and here they are finished!
thank you for reading!
please comment and tell me if you tried it and if it worked for you!
I hope this makes taking care of your guinea pigs much easier :)

Thursday, January 3, 2013

These are some things that most people think are good for Guinea Pigs, But I am here to tell You they are not!
Have you ever thought "Gee, it would be fun to take My Guinea Pig for a walk"? Well I must admit, I have, its not a good idea. Especially if You were going to put Your Guinea Pig in a harness, You know the cute ones that come in different colors that have a picture of a guinea pig on them? those are extremely bad for Your Guinea Pigs spine and can result in serious injury! A much safer alternative for exercising your little darling is getting a playpen for either inside or out (be sure that if its outside its not in to much sun and that it is at least 70f degrees) something else that can damage a guinea pigs spine is those little run around balls, i mean can you imagine being trapped in a little plastic ball and keep getting your fingers stuck in the air holes? i can, and i would not be happy, especially if i kept running into things or a cat was trying to chase me. and plus a Guinea Pigs spine is built differently than a hamsters, so lets just let hamsters use those run around balls (again i strongly recommend a playpen). Another thing that some people mistake is good for guinea pigs is wire flooring, "jitters" i mean if its covered with bedding or hey its perfectly safe right? wrong! guinea pigs feet are very sensitive and small so their feet can get blisters and are so delicate that they could just slip through the little holes and they could either get stuck or break a bone! so it is a much better idea to use a plastic floor with a thick layer of bedding.and finally different kinds of seeds and/or nuts, not sure what the nutritional value is in these but i think nuts are for squirrels and hamsters and my guinea pigs just don't like them! and I'm sure your guinea pig would much rather have a nice juicy carrot or a fresh piece of romaine lettuce, yum! so the morale of this story is if it has a guinea pig advertized on it it doesn't mean that it safe for your sweet cavy.
thank you so much for reading! i hope you found it helpful and/or useful information, please tell me what you think and if you liked it please share with your friends!