Choosing Your Cavy Feed

Finding a good cavy feed can be challenging at best.  What one breeder swears by may not work for you at all.  It takes time and patience to find a feed that is readily available in your area and that your cavies do well on.

There is no "perfect feed" out there.  And even though the feed bag has the same name on it (like Manna Pro), does not mean it has the same stuff inside.  Many feed companies will swap out ingredients if something cheaper comes along, so stay in touch with you feed Rep. and look at the ingredients tags to see if they have changed something. Some feeds (like Manna Pro Rabbit Gro) use different mills in different parts of the country.  Some mills are known for having poor quality feed, some for high quality. So just because your breeder friends in New York have great luck with a feed, does not mean you will have the same results with the same feed in California, even though it has the same name on the feed bag.  Do your research first!  Ask the feed reps where the feed was milled.

Call the manufacturers (all of them that you can find) and ask to talk to someone who really knows guinea pigs, and see why they think you should use their feed.  Let them "prove" to you that their feed is worth your business.  Then ask them if they know about the "other guy's" feed.  Compare the feeds as much as possible.  You will learn fascinating things about each feed company doing this.  You may also find that you will be offered "free" feed or coupons, to try their feed out. 

Also, find out who your feed store gets their feed from (which large distributor).  My feed store did not even know they could get Oxbow Cavy Performance.  I called "their" supplier/wholesaler and asked, the supplier said they could easily send a bag if it to the feed store in their weekly order.  The feed store was surprised when I told them this, but when they called their wholesaler, sure enough, the Oxbow was readily available.  So...you may have more feeds available to you than you think (more than even your own feed store thinks/knows about!)! It took a couple days of calling around, but at least I found some alternatives to the poor quality cavy chow that my feed store regularly carries.

Probably the best thing to do is research all available cavy feeds in your own area.  Find one that is readily available (you may have to drive a bit to find it!), made with good ingredients (no animal products, no corn if possible, etc), preferably hay based (usually alfalfa), has Vit C, and is fairly fresh (within 3 months).  You may have to try it out for a few months before deciding if it is the right feed for you.  It can be a challenge finding a good cavy feed in your area, keep calling, be willing to drive a bit or even have it shipped in if necessary.  Consider combining your feed needs with other breeders in your area, you may be able to get a good quality feed shipped in if enough people commit to purchasing it.

When evaluating the feed you have chosen to go with, make sure it looks and smells fresh.  It is better if it has been stored inside, as heat or vermin can ruin a good bag of feed.  After using it for a while, your animals should appear healthy, bright eyed, have shiny coats, and nice hard bodies.  Some good indicators that the feed you are using is working: high conception rates, healthy animals, low incidence of pregnancy toxemia, low stillborn rate, nice sized babies, and comments from the judges that your animals feel great and have great coat and body condition. 

Some indicators that you may need to switch feeds or at least supplement you current feed:  poor condition (flabby bodies, too fat, etc), dull or thinning hair, low conception rates, sows dumping their litters, baby small and weak, high stillborn rate, babies not thriving after weaning, many cases of pregnancy toxemia, neural tube defects in newborns (folic acid deficiency), difficulty walking/bleeding gums (or other signs of Vit C deficiency), sows dying during childbirth or right after (calcium deficiency?), animals not making senior weight (if it's in their genes to be large)  and judges making comments about the poor body/coat condition. 

May everyone find a feed that works for them!

Comments

[Carrie Lestyk]

Hi Leslie!
What a great article--THANKS!!! I was wondering if another sign of needing to change feed was maybe molars growing too much indicating the pellets were too soft? Have you had any problems with this? What do you do for teeth? I feed hay about twicw a week--the KayTee timothy hay.
Thanks again for the wonderful and informative article!
Carrie

[Leslie Freeland]

Hello! You know, I thought about the molar issue, but some very good pellets are fairly soft (ie: west coast Manna Pro, the new Cavy-Lets, etc). So....it seems to me, if you think your pellet is a bit soft, give hay. Not hay cubes (as they don't wear down the molars, just the front teeth), but fresh loose hay.

I give 1-2 huge wads of hay in each cage daily. So far I have never had a problem with teeth. The pigs love the hay, diving into it, climbing through it, hiding in it, eating it, etc. Only once did I get a badly hay poked eye, so the risk of that is always there. I buy a bale of Orchard grass hay and with 20 pigs, go through 1 bale per month. They love the stuff!

So I wouldn't necessarily dismiss an otherwise good feed because of a soft pellet. If you did notice molar problems, maybe you need to think about adding hay (or more hay), or switching to a harder pellet. If you did all that and the molar issues still come up, then maybe it's something genetic?

I just picked up 2 bags of food yesterday (will be picking up a 3rd today). The Oxbow Cavy Performance is a very hard, small pellet (and very expensive, about $30.00 for 30lbs!). The Manna Pro Rabbit Gro is a larger, softer pellet and very cheap ($12.00 for 50lbs!). I like to taste & smell the pellets also, just to compare them one other way (I'm strange, I know, I always did that with anything I had to give my daughter too, like kid medicines). The Oxbow was very tart tasting, like it had lots of C, and was hard to chew. The Manna Pro crumbled in my mouth and just tasted like hay. My husband said the Oxbow smelled like the hydroponics store he used to shop at, but the Manna Pro smelled like plain hay.

This morning I am driving about 1 hour away to pick up a new feed called Kings. If I really like it, I will pester my local feed dealer to start carrying it. I plan to smell it, taste it, analyze it, and try it on a small group of my cavies.

I have been so disappointed in my current food that I am going to do a little experiment. I have taken my whole herd, divided it into 3, and will give each group a different feed for about 3-4 months. So group#1 will get Oxbow Cavy Performance, group #2 will get Manna Pro Rabbit Gro, and group #3 will get Kings Guinea Pig Feed. I made sure there were babies, sows in breeding, and adult boars in each group. I will weigh them all first, then weigh and inspect them weekly for any positive or negative changes. Also, notes will need to be made on conception rates, stillborns, sows dying, sows & babies living, illnesses, etc.

In the end, hopefully 1 of these 3 feeds will turn out to be very good and I will switch the entire herd over to that. It's is quite a bit of work to do this, but like Michele, I have not been happy with my current feed, so I am looking into what else is available to me.

It's funny, the feed I am using right now that I want to replace (Mazuri), is used by a local breeder that has stunning animals! She swears by that feed and I can visually see that her animals are thriving on it. Now, why I don't get the same results is quite the mystery.

Basically it's a matter or trial & error, time and patience. At first I was leaning towards the Oxbow, but now I am hoping the Kings Feed works out best. I don't really want to pay over $30.00 for 30lbs of feed. I keep a fairly small herd (20-30 animals), so it would probably work for me, but it is not a good solution for people with larger herds. Then again if it keeps the sows big and healthy during labor and delivery, it just might be worth it! So for now, it stays in the testing.

[Shelley Manley]

Leslie:
Great Idea/experiment! Make sure you post the results.
Judging what other people are feeding is probably not possible since most people feed hay, kitchen scraps, vitamins, etc. that can vary. Hay can have toxic weeds and molds, veggie scraps may have insecticides, etc. Anecdotal evidence is notoriously unreliable.
Think about the average human getting a bad stomach bug. You may blame the ham sandwich you just ate and never be able to look at ham again, when it may have been a virus, the lunch salad or even the ice cubes in the drink last night.

[Natasha Mountain]

Your article is excellent. So many people I know do not take finding a good hard cavy feed as a serious issue. As you said it is so important! I know numerous people who use horse feed for their cavies - something I am totally against. These people are constantly loosing babies and sows and don't stop to think that it is more then likely the feed they are using causing this!
I hope your article helps people to take the issue of feeding their cavies more seriously.

[Leslie Freeland]

Thanks! It's been a few months now and I have found the cavies do well on all feeds I am trying as long as I give them extra Vit C. I have found a very good local feed (local as in 1 hour away, it's King's Guinea Pig Feed), but I still give the cavies extra C and I am having much better results doing this. I give the cavies veggies every day with pure ascorbic acid sprinkled on them. The pigs just gobble them up. I used to put the C in the water, but this works better for me and my small herd for now.

There are feeds made for other animals (like rabbits, etc) that do work well with the cavies, it's just a matter of reading the labels and doing your research. In fact, there is an available feed here (a rabbit chow) that the cavies do much better on than the locally carried cavy feeds (those closer than 1 hour). I have found the feed stores here carry a very low quality cavy chow that is actually harmful to cavies and in a pinch this particular rabbit feed is much better for them. I do prefer using the good quality cavy chow though. Hopefully it will be distributed closer to me than an hour away someday! Seeing those healthy babies and happy cavies makes it worth the trip.

[geoff p]

nice blog! definately will be returning for a few more visits - plenty of info to absord