Dried fruit are those fruits where most of the water contnt has been removed from them.

They are pretty popular these days as treats and snacks because of their sweet taste and health values.

There are many different dried fruits that you could possibly eat include;
Dates
Dried apples
Dried apricots
Dried peaches
Dried plums
Figs
Raisins

For humans, dried fruits provide very good nutrients and many different qualities that help increase the quality of our diet’s and reduce the risk of disease.

So if they are so good for us, are they any good for guinea pigs?

image wikipedia

The thing about dried fruit is that they are very sweet which immediately springs alarm bells as far as guinea pigs are concerned.

Sugar is not good for guinea pigs in general and for any food that is high in sugar should only be fed to guinea pigs infrequently.

Raisins for example contain 59.9g of sugar per 100g, which is a huge amount of sugar intake for guinea pigs to handle.

Its not to say that they can’t eat them or nibble on them, but they really shouldn’t be part of their diet at all.

If you do want to feed them to your piggies, then very small amounts a few times a month will suffice but anything more than that will be quite detrimental to them.

Too much sugar will give them tummy trouble and probably result in diarrhoea, and so this is true for most high sugar foods.

Can guinea pigs eat freeze dried fruit?

Freeze-drying is when the fruit is frozen  and then placed in a chamber which sucks out the water content and then the fruit is  thawed out.

Like dried fruit, freeze dried fruit can be fed to piggies to nibble on, but they are still very high in sugar and so nothing more than once or twice a month in very small amounts.