Tag Archives: food

can guinea pigs eat their own pooop

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Their Own Pooop?

So the grossest thing happened today. I was sitting holding ‘Rocket’ one of my boars and he happened to do a poo on my lap.

Any guinea pig owner will tell you that this is an occupational hazard so I wasn’t phased by it.

I didn’t have any tissues nearby and didn’t have a towel on my lap.

The only thing was, as I was sitting there looking at what to do with this poop sitting on my lap, Rocket sniffed it and promptly gulped it down.

Can guinea pigs eat their own poop?

Seeing your guinea pig eating their own poop is the most bizarre thing!

But is this normal and is it okay for guinea pigs to eat their own poop?

As humans, we are naturally repulsed by such a thing and it is pretty disgusting.

Actually, for guinea pigs its pretty normal.

You see a guinea pig’s poop holds valuable nutrients for it.

Their bodies can’t hold all the nutrients they require and so by eating their own poop, they can look to eat the nutrients they require a second time.

If you hang around them for too long, you will see them eating their own poop out of its own anus. This can often mean reaching behind its body and scooping it out of its anus.

Gross huh?

But its perfectly healthy and the guinea pigs will gain a lot of good nutrients from doing so.

So don’t worry at all about this happening.

 

For more things that guinea pigs can and can’t eat, check out our guinea pig food list

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Green Peppers

We’ve already seen how much yellow and red peppers are liked by guinea pigs.

What about green peppers?

If you know about peppers you will know that there are different colours because of their maturity. We looked at that in this post  🙂

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Green Peppers are those that are right at the beginning of their maturity. They haven’t even began to ripen yet and so are not as sweet as yellow, red or purple peppers.

But can guinea pigs eat them, lets take a look and find out.

As usual we’re looking at the calcium, sugar, fat, oxelate acid and phosphorus content to see if they are any good for guinea pigs. These factors determine whether a guinea pig can eat foods of not.

Also a healthy amount of vitamin c and a is very good for guinea pigs.

Calories 27 • % Daily Value*
Total fat 0.2 g 0%
Saturated fat 0 g 0%
Cholesterol 0 mg 0%
Sodium 2 mg 0%
Potassium 212 mg 6%
Total Carbohydrate 6 g 2%
Dietary fiber 0.9 g 3%
Protein 1 g 2%
Vitamin A 4%
Vitamin C 305%
Calcium 1%
Iron 2%
Vitamin B-6 10%
Vitamin B-12 0%
Magnesium 3%

As you can see green peppers have a remarkable amount of vitamin c which is fantastic news for guinea pigs.

They are also low in fat, contain no sugar,phosphorus and oxelate acid. This makes them virtually ideal for guinea pigs.

Indeed they can eat green peppers pretty much once a day as part of their diet.

I normally cut them up into strips, but piggies will take green peppers which ever way you feed it to them. All they’re concerned about is that its in their cage and ready for them to eat in some shape or form 🙂

Can guinea pigs eat green pepper stems?

No they can’t unfortunately, they need to be cut off as they are too tough for them to chew through.

Can guinea pigs eat green pepper seeds?

Unfortunately, they can’t as their is an issue of chokage. So do strip them away from the pepper when you are cutting them up for guinea pigs.

Can guinea pigs eat fried green peppers?

No guinea pigs can’t eat any cooked foods at all. Feed to them raw.

can guinea pigs eat each other

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Each Other?

So can Guinea Pigs Eat Each Other?

Not a dumb a question as it sounds!

A lot of animals will resort if absolutely desperate to eat the corpses of their own.

But will guinea pigs eat each other if they were absolutely desperate for food?

The short answer is no.

The longer answer is they are herbivores so do not eat meat at all. They will nibble on it but will quickly turn away from it.

So there is no danger of cannibalism as far as guinea pigs are concerned.

However, they will fight each other and there is often conflict within herds. In these situations, guinea pigs have been known to bite each other as an attack.

They have also been known to chew on each other’s hair, merely out of interest and because they are always looking to chew on something.

But that’s where it ends, and guinea pigs will not go further than biting or nibbling each other or even chewing each other’s hair, which is nice to know really 🙂

For more information on animals and cannibalism, check out this article.