can guinea pigs eat onions

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Onions?

Onions are found around the world and cultivated as a foodstuff.

They are used in a huge number of different culinary situations and are a staple food for many around the world.

They are an extremely versatile food and are pungent when they are chopped up and are well known for irritating eyes when done so.

So can guinea pigs eat onions at all?

In my mind, being a guinea pig owner I would guess that they are not so good for them to eat.

But its good to find out more about what they contain and make a conclusion from the information that we find out them.

Let’s take a look here at their nutritional data and find out more.

In particular, their acidic, phosphorus, calcium, sugar, water, and salt content is of most interest as far as guinea pigs are concerned.

Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)
Energy 166 kJ (40 kcal)
Carbohydrates
9.34 g
Sugars 4.24 g
Dietary fiber 1.7 g
Fat
0.1 g
Protein
1.1 g
Vitamins
Thiamine (B1) (4%) 0.046 mg
Riboflavin (B2) (2%) 0.027 mg
Niacin (B3) (1%) 0.116 mg
Pantothenic acid (B5)
(2%) 0.123 mg
Vitamin B6 (9%) 0.12 mg
Folate (B9) (5%) 19 μg
Vitamin C (9%) 7.4 mg
Minerals
Calcium (2%) 23 mg
Iron (2%) 0.21 mg
Magnesium (3%) 10 mg
Manganese (6%) 0.129 mg
Phosphorus (4%) 29 mg
Potassium (3%) 146 mg
Zinc (2%) 0.17 mg
Other constituents
Water 89.11 g
Fluoride 1.1 µg

source wikipedia

Summary

As you can see, onions contain a little phosphorus, a hint of calcium, quite a lot of acidic content and sugar.

But they also contains a lot of water which is not good for guinea pigs.

Due to the amount of acidic content and water that onions contain, they will unfortunately make guinea pigs sick if they eat them.

They just can’t handle the nutrients that they contain.

Too much water will bloat a guinea pig and too much acidic content will cause their stomach to become upset.

This means that not only raw onions, but it would be worth avoiding other variations such as red onions, spring onions, pickled onions and green onions as they have similar nutrients.

They also cannot eat cooked onions as cooked foods are not good for guinea pigs.

Just a final note.

Although I have never tried feeding onions to my piggies, I don’t think they would attempt to eat them due to their pungent smell, they always give food a good sniff to check it out and my piggies are quite picky about what they eat.

In my experience, guinea pigs are quite smart about knowing what they like and don’t like, which is pretty good for us owners if we decide to feed them food which isn’t good.

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