Guinea Pigs - The Importance of Vitamin C

You and your guinea pig may have more in common than they realize. Both you and your guinea pig should have vitamin C to survive. Unfortunately, guinea pigs suffer many health problems that can be attributed to a lack of vitamin C. Unlike other mammals that produce vitamin C from glucose in the body, you and your guinea pig both the lack of certain enzymes needed to carry out this process. Thus, both human and guinea pig vitamin C requirements must be satisfied with external sources. Thus, a daily supplement of vitamin C is absolutely necessary to ensure that your cavy is getting her daily requirement of this important vitamin.
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Your guinea pig should have a regular source of vitamin C, or they will perish. There are two broad categories of vitamins: water soluble vitamins and fat soluble vitamins. Vitamin C is water-soluble vitamins. Fat-soluble vitamins (like vitamins A, D, E and K) were dissolved lipids - fatty droplets. Once these vitamins are absorbed lipids, they are stored in your body tissues.
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The good news is that you can give your pig (or yourself) an overdose of vitamin C. The body can not store significant amounts of vitamin C. It will simply excrete the excess in the urine. However, there is also bad news: because the vitamin C quickly passes through the body of your cavy, they must receive supplements on a daily basis
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a great way to ensure that your pigs diet contains sufficient amounts of vitamin C to feed them a diet rich in dark leafy vegetables such as parsley, kale or romaine lettuce. Be sure to avoid iceberg lettuce as it is mostly water and empty calories. Iceberg lettuce is essentially devoid of any nutritional value. As a general rule of thumb - the darker and more richly colored fruits and vegetables - contain more vitamins and more nutritionally desirable
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to ensure that your pig is getting sufficient amounts of vitamin C a day, it is also recommended to supplement their diet with vitamin C supplements in the form of crystals, tablets or liquid drops. Tablets or crystals can be ground or crushed into a fine powder and sprinkled on food. Or powder can also be dissolved in your drinking water cavy. Liquid supplements can be added to drinking water or sprinkled on the guinea pig food.
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Be careful when adding vitamin C to your pig drinking water. Vitamin C can be destroyed by substances found in tap water in certain regions. Your safest bet is to use distilled or purified water.
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