Branches and leaves for guinea pigs
A leafy branch is food and occupation at once. A guinea pig strips the bark, works through the buds and busies herself for hours. And almost everything people say about branches turns out to be untrue.
What to give
Give the branch whole — bark, leaves, buds, flowers and small fruit. Guinea pigs go for fresh leaves first, then the bark, and thin twigs disappear entirely.
Almost all local trees and shrubs are suitable: apple, pear, hazel, willow, lime, birch, blackcurrant, raspberry, blackberry. Apple, hazel and willow are the favourites. Keep fresh branches in the cage and replace them twice a week.
What is off limits
- Yew — highly poisonous, the main exception among conifers.
- Ornamental shrubs from parks and flower beds: many are imported species nobody knows anything about.
- Branches from roadsides, or from trees that may have been sprayed.
- Shop-bought «gnawing sticks»: short, old, often treated — and usually ignored.
Myth one: cherry branches contain cyanide
The most common warning is to avoid branches of stone fruit — cherry, plum, apricot — because of cyanide. This is not true.
Cyanogenic compounds sit only in the kernel of the stone — not in the bark, not in the leaves, not in the branches. The toxicologist Jacqueline Kupper of the University of Zurich states plainly that stone fruit branches can be offered to chinchillas, guinea pigs and rabbits, provided they were not sprayed.
So a cherry branch is ordinary food. The stone with its kernel is another matter, as is leaving a whole peach with your guinea pig.
Myth two: branches wear the teeth down
The second common belief is that a guinea pig needs branches and hard objects to wear down her incisors. Research shows otherwise: incisors wear from the ordinary grinding motion of the lower jaw, not from gnawing wood. The hardness of the food has little effect on wear, molars and incisors alike.
That does not make branches pointless. They are simply needed as occupation and extra food rather than as a whetstone: an animal with something to strip is less bored and puts on less weight.
In winter
- Leaves dried in autumn make good winter food — easy to gather, and they keep.
- Cut branches put in water indoors will sprout, and the fresh leaf tips can be fed.
- Blackberry and garden bamboo stay green all winter — the simplest source of fresh leaves in February.
In short
- Give the branch whole: bark, leaves, buds.
- Nearly all local trees are fine; yew is not.
- Cherry and plum branches are safe — the cyanide is in the kernel only.
- Chewing wears the teeth, not the wood.
- Shop-bought sticks are a waste of money.