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A guinea pig is a grazing animal. Its natural food is grass and meadow herbs, not vegetables from the fridge. That is why everything in this section is built around hay and greens, and vegetables and fruit sit where they belong — at the end.
Шматочок як частування. Багато цукру.
Доповнення до зелені, а не заміна їй.
Одна рослина — один перекіс за мінералами.
Основа раціону і єдине, що по-справжньому стирає зуби.
Ширина ярусів показує пропорцію, а не точні відсотки.
Hay is around 80% of everything a guinea pig eats in a day, and it must be available around the clock. As a rule of thumb, the rack should hold roughly twice the volume of the animal itself. Yellowed, compacted or soiled hay will be refused — and that is not fussiness: such hay has lost both its taste and its value.
A healthy adult needs from 10 mg per kilogram of body weight per day, growing and pregnant animals around 30 mg/kg, and ill ones up to 50 mg/kg. Do not put it in the drinking water: exposed to light and air it loses about half its strength within a day, and you cannot control the dose that way. Food is the reliable source.
Source: Merck Veterinary Manual
Vegetables are an addition, not the base. A small piece once or twice a day; fruit even less often — a piece once a week, because of the sugar. A guinea pig that fills up on vegetables eats less hay, and gives its teeth less work.
One plant means one set of minerals and one imbalance. Every day the bowl should hold a mix of 3–5 kinds of greens: then an excess of calcium in one plant is balanced by the others. Fresh grass is the exception — it can be fed on its own.
What to buy, how much should be in the rack, and why a guinea pig refuses stale hay.
What you can pick from late spring to mid-autumn, and how to introduce fresh grass.
Lime, apple, blackcurrant, hazel, willow — and why conifers only in winter.
What replaces grass out of season, and why a daily mix of 3–5 kinds matters.
How much «a small piece» actually is.
Topics marked «in progress» are still being written — we do not publish half-empty articles for the sake of volume.
Answers without a source are common husbandry practice, not a figure from a guideline. We show that difference on purpose: a site that promises «no myths» has to separate the verified from the merely usual.