Guinea Pigs, Rabbits, Hamsters, Gerbils, Degus, Rats, Mice, Chipmunks and Pet Hedgehogs.
We strongly encourage you to measure your pets’ pellet portion to make sure you are not overfeeding.
While most veterinarians recommend that guinea pigs under six months old have unlimited pellets, they also say adult guinea pigs should be limited to ⅛ cup of high-quality pellets per day. While pellets do have critical vitamin C and other nutrients important to guinea pig health, too many pellets can lead to painful bladder stones and other health problems. Vets recommend feeding unlimited hay and water, plus a variety of fresh vegetables daily.
STAYbowl® was invented by Ken Foster, and his 10-year-old daughter, Megan, after their family adopted two guinea pigs (Ginger and Cocoa) from a Michigan-based small animal rescue group in 2013. Within weeks of adopting them, they noticed that their piggies would keep flipping over their pellet bowl. This was cute at first, but it quickly became annoying because they would have to sweep all the pellets up off the bottom of the cage. It also seemed a very wasteful and ultimately expensive way of feeding them. Ken, mum Janice and Megan realised that when food gets dumped, there is a tendency to refill the bowl, or to put a heavy crock in the cage and overload it with pellets. This leads to overfeeding and a whole host of health problems for small animals, just as it does in humans.
That’s when the father-daughter team sprang into action. What started out as a teachable moment at the kitchen table about product development evolved into a simple working STAYbowl® prototype, to a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and eventually to a fully designed, commercially produced product that effectively solves a simple problem for small pets.
