Does my guinea pig like eating newspaper??

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meiying

Chester & Jeffy
Joined
Jan 31, 2012
Messages
171
Location
Vancouver Island, British Columbia
I have two male guinea pigs that are housed seperately in a cage due to aggression. They can still see and smell each other through the wood fence but they cant get to each other anymore.

One of the pigs is on a smaller size (1104g) comparing to my other pig but is the aggressive one. He is about 1.5 years old, loves his hay more than his pellets or vegetables, BUT he eats newspaper from time to time, especially right after i change their shavings, i can hear him digging through the shavings and tearing the newspaper apart. Why does he do that? He has unlimited supply of hay, pellets, water, and the right amount of vegetables every day, he cant be straving.... So, any other pigs do that?
 
yep, most of my guineas will eat any kind of paper, if they get their lil paws on it! Who knows why... maybe it tastes good?!!

It's not so good for them though (there's ink on it, plus it's just bulk fibre with no nutritional value), so if he's eating it, then you probably shouldn't use it as a cage liner.

Personally, I just use 2 inches of KD pine or aspen shavings, and don't bother with a paper liner. Some people use fleece liners, and just wash them as necessary.

Gotta love those wee guineas though, such crazy personalities! :heart3:
 
Pigs LOVE to tear up paper. Rabbits are the same. It just comes with the territory. Personally I don't use newspaper in my pig's cage, just a good thick layer of Carefresh. Its not dangerous for him to shred the paper, but its not good if he eats it.... I would advise not using it.
 
You can do fleece over cotton and unlike rabbits gps won't dig up the liner. They just pee a lot so you have to use a cotton layer (we don't do that with the hedgies or the chins) and change it fairly often. Here's our huge fleece cage with a little hay eating section over wheat pellets. Loved the wheat pellets as bedding because rather than break down in to dust like wood pellets they would clump making pee spots easy to remove but you could only order them straight from oxbow at the time so only a small area was cost effective.
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/aqh88/library/guinea pigs/past/girls/fleece cage?sort=3&page=1
That was about a 9' long cage.

Later we just went to covering half a room in coroplast with little indented areas to reach guinea pigs and the cage without stepping in it. That made using bedding again less messy.
P1010112.jpg


Speaking of chewing on paper... Box fort and brown paper in the kitchen:
P10100803.jpg

P1010079.jpg


tasty
P1010085.jpg
 
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