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A cavy must have corn, greens and hay. It is amazing the amount of food a Cavy can eat. Our method of feeding is as follows:
Morning feed consists of corn mix and hay. The corn diet is made up of various things. At least 50% of it is rolled oats. The other 50% is made up of barley, peas, wheat and molasses meal. This is mixed together and fed to the pigs. As a variation, we sometimes soak sugar beet pulp and mix this with bran, then add the corn ration as above. The evening feed is made up of greens or roots. We only feed grass as a tit-bit, as we have an excellent supply of greens all year round.
Some fanciers like to feed hay in the evening, but we feed it at morning, the reason being that the cavies are less active during the day-time; they seem to sit and just nibble hay all the time. At night-time they become very active and soon trample down new hay by all their running about. So we think they are happier with new hay in the morning.
Water is given by some fanciers and not by others. If your do not feed water, the cavies should have damp mashes and plenty of greens or roots, i.e. cauliflower, cabbage, turnip, carrots, beetroot, mangold, fodder-beet, apple, corn on the cob, chicory. They must not be fed pellets without water.
Personally, we think that water should always be available.
Some fanciers give soluble Vitamin C, as Cavies must have Vitamin C daily. If your greens are fresh, then your Vitamin C is there within them. Cavy pellets normally contain Vitamin C and no supplement is needed. We do not add Vitamin C to our ration, as we collect greens daily and they are fresh.
A Cavy lacking Vitamin C will lose general condition and their hair will be loose but Sellnick will also give these symptoms so if they occur and you are sure your feed is ok, then you should be treating for Sellnick, not Vitamin C deficiency.
We clean out once weekly and, as they hay has built up over the week, we do not feed hay the day before we clean out. This way the hay is eaten up and there is less waste.
Before we put a boar with sows, any sows carrying excess weight are given less corn and more greens, roots and hay. Too much weight is one reason why sows do not get in pig.
To sum up, feed a good balanced diet, use your own intuition as to how much a pen of pigs will eat. Do not let your pigs get desperately hungry, BUT they should always be ready for their next meal.
