Treats for guinea pigs aren’t just tasty snacks – they’re powerful tools for bonding, taming, and enriching your guinea pig’s life! Though treats may seem like a simple topic, when it comes to treats for guinea pigs, there are a variety of different types and brands, health considerations, accessibility factors, and so much more to consider! In this comprehensive guide, we cover everything you need to know about treats for guinea pigs along with our recommendations.
Our Favorite Treats for Guinea Pigs at a Glance
Not everyone is looking for a whole dissertation on treats, so we’ve created this quick chart of our favorite treats. We’ve rated each of these treats by price per volume of treat; how effective they are for taming, bonding, and training; taste value (how much most guinea pigs like it compared to other treats); how healthy they are; how long each treat takes to eat; and a general recommendation of how many they should have per day.
Pea Flakes – Our Favorite treat for taming & training!
Dried Carrot Flakes – Our favorite treat for guinea pigs that don’t like pea flakes!
Nibble Rings – Our favorite on a budget!
Snackers – Our favorite healthy treat!
Oxbow Cookies – A classic, reliable treat.
Timothy Hay Sticks – Our favorite chew toy!
Bonding & Taming Guinea Pigs With Treats
As prey animals, guinea pigs are predisposed to run and hide from humans. These natural instincts are what would keep them alive in the wild. Whether they consciously know that they’re safe with you or not, those instincts will always exist. But we can do a bit of simple behavior modification with treats to encourage them to face those fears. This can help them become a much more confident guinea pig that is willing to be touched, held, and may even run over to the side of the cage to greet you!
Though fresh veggies work great for bonding and taming, I am a huge advocate of making everything easier and more accessible for everyone. As such, I find that having dried, shelf stable treats in an easily accessible place (like right beside the cage) will encourage you to interact more with your guinea pigs. This means you can do simple taming exercises with them far more frequently as all you need to do is walk up and give them a treat, no kitchen prep required!
For more information on how to successfully bond with and tame your guinea pigs, check out our taming exercises.
Enriching Guinea Pigs Through Treats
Dried treats also allow for lots of enrichment opportunities! Whether you are providing enrichment through a chew toy treat or by hiding smaller treats within hay or toys so your guinea pig can forage for them – treats allow for lots of fun, new ways to exercise your guinea pig’s brain and body.
Want to learn more about what exactly enrichment is and how to do it with your guinea pigs?
Types of Treats for Guinea Pigs
Fresh Produce for Guinea Pigs
Fruits and veggies are what you would call “high value” treats, meaning for most guinea pigs they will be the preferred treat of all of the options, especially when we’re talking about things like carrots and parsley. Veggies, especially, make excellent treats for guinea pigs as they should already be receiving a cup of vegetables daily. So you can use that vegetable allotment as treats instead if you’d like.
In my experience, these are the most highly enjoyed fruits and vegetables to guinea pigs:
- Parsley
- Carrot
- Carrot Top
- Strawberry
- Lettuce (avoid iceberg)
- Bell Pepper
- Apple
- Blueberry
All of these options make excellent treats for guinea pigs and will be the most effective when taming and bonding as the more desirable the treat is the better your guinea pig will respond to training. For a more exhaustive list of fruits and veggies that are good for your guinea pigs, check out this fresh food guide.
However, the need to buy fresh, refrigerate, and prep these foods requires a lot more forethought, and as such it is helpful to have some other types of treats, especiallyshelf-stable ones, on hand.
Single-Ingredient Dried Treats for Guinea Pigs
That brings us to our first type of shelf-stable treats, single-ingredient dried treats for guinea pigs.
These treats are exactly what they sound like: one single piece of fruit or vegetable that has been dried to remove all of the moisture, making the food shelf stable (meaning it will last a long time at room temperature.)
Pea Flakes
The most common form of single-ingredient dried treats for guinea pigs is pea flakes, which are a favorite among many guinea pigs. Pea flakes are one of our favorite treats to use during taming and other training with our guinea pigs because they are small and quick to chew while also being very delicious. With these we can give many treats in a short period of time to reward our guinea pig’s good behaviors.
Other Single-Ingredient Treats
There are many other great options as well, like dried carrots, dried bell pepper, dried strawberries, and dried bananas. Though strawberries and bananas are healthy treats for guinea pigs, they should not be given frequently as they are high in sugar. Though many small pet brands sell these, human-grade counterparts not marketed to small pets can be a more economically friendly option, just make sure there is only the one ingredient and no oil or preservatives.
Forage Mixes for Guinea Pigs
Another type of “whole food” treats for guinea pigs is foraging mixes. Foraging mixes contain a variety of different single-ingredient dried treats kept whole and mixed together. Often, these are somewhat lower value treats that are meant to provide a wide variety of flavors and textures for your guinea pigs to enrich their minds and stimulate their foraging instincts.
Foraging mixes can be used as single treats for some highly food-motivated guinea pigs, but most guinea pigs won’t find them enticing enough to offer new behaviors and work on taming with them. But we love sprinkling foraging mixes into our guinea pigs’ hay or on top of their food to provide them with a bit of variety.
DIY Forage Mix
If you garden, you can even grow foraging mixes on your own! The bulk of most foraging mixes are actually made of various flowers and herbs, read our article on edible flowers if you want to learn more about common foraging plants for guinea pigs that you may want to add to your garden!
Our Favorite Forage Mix on the Market
Don’t garden? That’s okay! Lots of different pet brands offer foraging mixes, but our favorites come from Small Pet Select, they even have foraging mixes that cater to the specific needs of different guinea pigs, like the Zen Tranquility Blend to help calm down anxious guinea pigs! (And it smells divine!)
Commercial Cookie Treats for Guinea Pigs
Commercial “cookie treats” are treats that are a mix of many ingredients, often including hay, blended together and dried into small shapes, like hearts or circles, to look like little cookies. Oxbow is known for making treats like these.
Assessing the Safety of Cookie Treats
Cookie treats can sometimes be challenging to judge as they often have a lot of filler ingredients or high-sugar ingredients that guinea pigs should have little, if any, of. However, cookie treats made with only healthy ingredients can be a great option! Sometimes, there will be ingredients included specifically to preserve the cookies so they stay safe and fresh longer, and that’s fine. But you should stay away from treats that include things like dairy, nuts, seeds, processed sugar, and honey; though this list is not exhaustive. Our food guide includes more information on various ingredients that are and are not safe for guinea pigs.
There are some ingredients that aren’t considered “healthy” for guinea pigs but are fine in small amounts, such as corn, oats, and molasses. As we’re talking about treats, which are not a large part of your guinea pigs’ diet, these ingredients are acceptable for most guinea pigs. Though if your guinea pig has special health concerns, it would be best to discuss ingredients like these with your veterinarian. After discussion with our Vet, we have actually decided to purposely give one of our guinea pigs treats with oats, corn, and molasses as she is underweight and these ingredients can encourage appetite and weight gain in guinea pigs.
Trusted, Safe Cookie Treats
Commercial cookie treats that have safe ingredients and are from a reputable brand like Oxbow or Small Pet Select are great options to have shelf-stable treats easily on hand any time you want to give your guinea pigs a treat. But lots of them can be a bit big. Though this would be fine if you just want to give your guinea pig a treat randomly for no reason – which we won’t blame you for – they’re not ideal treats for taming exercises and other types of training with your guinea pigs. Ideally, you’d want small treats that can be eaten quickly when doing training exercises so that they can spend more time thinking and interacting with you and less time munching.
Healthy Snackers
Because of that, we actually really like these ones from Small Pet Select, which are some of the smallest cookie treats we’ve seen. Although they have changed the size of them a few times, so check the listing to see how large the cookies are currently if that’s relevant to you.
Nibble Rings
We also like these Nibble Rings, which are a fairly budget-friendly option. And because the nibble rings are a ring shape, they’re also very easy to break into two or three pieces to have even smaller treats for taming and training – so these are actually one of our favorite treats!
Supplement Cookies
Another type of commercial cookie treats for guinea pigs are supplements, such as the very popular Oxbow Vitamin C treats. Supplement cookies are made in the same way as the other cookie treats, but have specific health goals in mind. In addition to Vitamin C cookies, there are multivitamins, urinary support, skin and coat, and more being developed every day! These are good options for guinea pigs with mild health issues but should NOT replace appropriate diagnosis and treatment from a veterinarian.
Homemade Cookie Treats for Guinea Pigs
Homemade cookie treats are made with the same methods as commercial cookie treats but in your own kitchen! As most people don’t have dehydrators or freeze dryers, these cookies aren’t usually shelf stable and instead should be kept in the fridge for about a week or frozen. Drying in the oven is almost never as effective as true dehydrating, the cookies don’t truly dry out enough to be left out in room temperature. As such, though making cookies can be a great budget-friendly alternative to commercial cookies, they may not be as easy to use as training treats.
But we do love making customized cookie treats for our guinea pigs, especially when we have extra of a fresh ingredient on hand! Check out these Cranberry Cookies we made for our guinea pigs and consider making your own this fall!
Hay Chew Treats for Guinea Pigs
Hay chew treats are a whole other category of treat that makes an excellent addition to your guinea pig’s care. There are many different types of chew toys but we’re specifically talking about the ones that are tasty, multi-ingredient, and provide some nutritional value. These treats are similar to cookies but they are harder and take longer to chew. Usually, hay is the top ingredient and that’s one of the reasons they are so desired. These make great enrichment for your guinea pigs as they provide additional taste and texture while being mostly made of hay. They’re especially good to give to your guinea pigs before a stressful event, like going to the vet or having people over to your house.
Because these treats are mainly made up of hay, they are the lowest value, or least desirable, treats to your guinea pigs. This means your guinea pig likely won’t face fears or do new behaviors in order to earn a nibble and so they aren’t good treats for taming or training. However, these treats make excellent distractions when handling your guinea pigs. Next time you’re cuddling with your guinea pig, say you’re watching a movie with them, let them gnaw on a hay chew treat! You may be surprised at how calm and happy it keeps them, and it’s a great way to build a positive, relaxed experience with you.
Hay Sticks
A common form of hay chew treats is hay sticks, often Timothy Sticks or Alfalfa Sticks. Timothy and Alfalfa sticks are our favorites because they’re simple and budget-friendly, but we do also occasionally get other hay sticks that have extra ingredients included like edible flowers.
Hay Blocks
Hay blocks are very simply just a bunch of hay compressed into a block with some ingredients binding them together. These are the simplest of hay chew treats but generally include the most whole ingredients.
Various Shaped Hay Cookie Blocks
These types of hay chew treats usually look even more like commercial cookie treats but are much bigger and meant to take at least an hour for your guinea pig to slowly chew on and eat. We recently tried some from Norman’s Bunny Treats and our guinea pigs loved them! (Use code “Kim” for 10% off!)
Unsafe Treats for Guinea Pigs
Unfortunately, there are lots of unsafe and unhealthy treats for guinea pigs on the market. Any treat that has nuts, seeds, or dairy (guinea pigs can’t eat any animal products) is an immediate NO. You should also avoid treats that have an unnecessary amount of sugar and other filler ingredients. If a treat is made of wholesome, healthy foods most guinea pigs will enjoy them. There is no need to include unnecessarily fattening and unsafe ingredients.
If you’re new to guinea pig treats, we’d recommend just sticking to Oxbow and Small Pet Select treats as both of these brands are highly knowledgeable about guinea pig nutrition. You should be able to find Oxbow in most pet stores, and Small Pet Select ships to anywhere in the US. You’ll also find that most healthier treats look boring and brown with a shorter ingredient list while unhealthy treats are generally colorful – but this isn’t always the case. As you learn more about the different ingredients in treats, feel free to branch out to treats from smaller brands, just check all of the ingredients first. I love to try out different products from new brands, no need to limit yourself!
Use our free care charts to keep track of all of the various tasks you should be doing for your guinea pigs daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly! Make care easier – get the care charts by signing up for our email list below.
Did we miss something? Feel free to ask us any questions in the comments, we’re here to help!
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