Guest Article By Athena
When new guinea pig owners ask this question, they often get the answer, “Unlimited hay!” While this is absolutely true, what you may be wondering is, “How much timothy hay are my cavies likely to stuff into their tummies between hay purchases?” For new owners, you might simply be wondering how much hay to purchase to start out and how long it will last. Though you know they should get unlimited access to hay, you also know you won’t be putting a truck size bale down for consumption, so what amounts serve as unlimited for a cavy?
Before you can figure out how much hay you will need, you’ll need to ask yourself four questions:
- How many piggies do I have?
- How old are my piggies?
- Will the timothy hay be used for bedding too? (And if so, what size is my piggies’ cage?)
- How often do I want to shop?
Let me use my own herd to illustrate. I have seven cavies. (Why yes, I do feel like Snow White, cleaning and preparing food, all while I sing to my tiny friends).
- Their names are Greasy, Quilt, Table, Jody, Butch, Zil, and Quasimodo. For the record, I did not pick their names and Quasdimodo is actually a lizard who thinks he’s a cavy. Since I have six actual guinea pigs to buy timothy hay for, I know I either have to shop more often, or buy a bigger box than if I had one cavy.
- My piggies are all 1-4 years old. I have no babies and no one is pregnant (I sincerely hope!) That means I don’t have any cavies who require alfalfa hay. I have the freedom to choose the hay I feel is best. Timothy hay is the most abundant, and the type of hay in which I can find the highest quality for my little guys. Since I don’t have to supply alfalfa, all of my hay will be Timothy, with exceptions made for treats like orchard grass or bluegrass.
- My timothy hay won’t be used for bedding, which is good because I have two 7ft x 3 ft cages. I’d have to buy hay by the ton if I wanted them to sleep in it! However, I like to be liberal with my Timothy hay. I never want to see a hayless cage, so I always try to have in twice the amount I think they’ll eat.
- Finally, I have to minimize how often I shop for hay. Shopping is the one thing I tend to procrastinate on, even if its dinner, be it the piggies’ din din or my own. The more often I have to shop, the more likely we’ll all miss our dinners. I’m not a very good Snow White, am I! Since I know I want to shop as little as possible, I choose to buy for as long as I think I can store hay and still have space to move or maintain its qualities.
Even though this is a lot of information, I don’t quite have enough data to finish my example.
The final piece of information that you need is how much a piggy can use in a day or a week (or a month – however you like to do your math is fine with Cavia porcellus!) If you’ve had experience with guinea pigs, or you’ve had just your one for a little while, you might have a general idea of how much a guinea pig can consume, roll in, and play with between orders. Do you know how much your cavy will eat in a day?
An average adult piggy on no-hay bedding will use 2-3 oz* of hay a day. It’s okay if yours uses more. Some piggies will use a little less. How much will depend on how active the guinea pig is, if the cavy is alone or not (and the social dynamics of the herd) and if they are rolling, playing, and pooping in the hay in addition to eating it (as piggies will do). The more piggies I have, the lower the rate per guinea pig goes, because they’re economizing (aka sharing) the hay they roll in and toss around. They are most certainly not sharing the hay they put in their tummies, so the overall amount of hay will increase.
So, for my six hay eating piggies, I order a 60 lb box of timothy hay every two months from Smart Pet Select. I supplement with a large bag or small bale bought locally, when I’m naughty and let all of the good stuff run out.
Lets do another example for those owners without a gaggle of guineas.
If you have two guinea pigs – both adults–they’ll probably use 4-6 oz a day combined. If you shop weekly this equates to 28-42 oz a week. A 10 lb box of timothy hay would be the perfect size for a month’s worth of hay. Now let’s say your guinea pigs, Wheek and Whack, also bed down on their hay for one week of every month (you like to mix things up for Wheek and Whack). You’re a conscientious owner and provide them with at least a 2 x 4 cage. You’ll need to add in the amount you use for bedding, and voila! That’s how much Timothy hay you’ll need.
Important! This is one last important thought to keep in mind: 2-3 oz isn’t a limit or a goal for your piggy! It’s a guide to help you figure out how much hay you’ll need until you get a feel for your cavy. If you ever run low on hay – say one of your cavies eats more than you thought, or they enjoy rolling in extras—DON’T limit yourself to 2-3 ounces per pig! For healthy teeth, stomachs, and immune systems, guinea pigs should always have quality hay to munch on and play in. Adjust your daily average upward, and order more as soon as you see you are running low.
*You may be wondering where I got that number. As an active guinea pig owner, I read a variety of forums. I took a sample from three different forums–a span of 5 years, 8 threads, and 41 data points– of what guinea pig owners said their pigs were using, and then did the actual math to come up with average and median ounces per pig per day. Double data points (where the same posters posted the amounts they used spaced a year or more apart) indicated that new owners tend to adjust their hay amounts upward over time, especially if they were providing 1.5 oz or less per piggy, while owners with more experience tend to adjust their amounts downward as a function of changing to better quality hay, especially if they are providing over 4 oz to their piggies. As a result, I multiplied the average and median by an experience weight of 1.5. I then compared this to what my own guinea pigs were using (roughly 2-3 oz) and found the numbers to be in line with each other. If you are statistically inclined, the spread was 5.36 oz with the lower limit and upper limit being .36 oz – 5.7 oz, with a standard deviation of 1.24, a kurtosis of .20 and a skew of .95. The unweighted/weighted median was 1.62/2.43 and the unweighted/weighted mean was around 2.15/3.23 oz. Does your cavy use a different average daily amount? Let us know in the comments the weight of the hay your cavies use, how many cavies you have, and in what time span they eat that hay, and we’ll add it to our dataset to refine our estimate.
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