Can Guinea Pigs Eat Prickly Pears?

One of the great things about being a guinea pig with a blog is that it gives us all sorts of opportunities to try new foods. Sometimes it doesn't work out (like kumquats and yellow squash), but sometimes it does. Cactus pear was somewhere in the middle. We'll give it 3.5/5 stars.



This is a Prickly Pear, also known as a Cactus Pear. Strange-looking, isn't it?



This is what the inside looks like. We've had pear before, and it didn't look like that!

While the humans were cutting it up for us, they ended up getting little barbs stuck in their fingers and cursing a lot. Buffy will run home to her pigloo at the drop of a hat, but even I got scared and ran for cover. I may be the brave, dominant one, but finding a hiding place when there's an angry giant in the room is just being smart. If you decide to give prickly pears to your piggies, make sure you know how to cut and prepare them. You don't want those little barbs getting in your fingers, or, even worse, in the mouths of your piggies!

Eventually, the storm of cursing passed, and we saw a human hand full of delicious-smelling fruit over our cage:

What is that? I want it!

Yum!

I like it!

The prickly pear itself was pretty good; it was actually more like watermelon than a pear. Buffy and I ate most of it, although not all of it. In addition to the barbs, these pears also have a lot of seeds in them that you should carefully remove before giving to your piggy. So, in summary, prickly pears taste pretty good, but there is a lot than can go wrong if you're not careful!