Halloween Pigture Report

Agent Butterloaf here - I was carefully watching from my pigloo of a setup that I overheard was for "a Halloween photo shoot." I remember from last year that meant I got to eat lots of parsley so I was excited. After a lot of setup outside of my house, I was picked up (I always squeak a lot so people know to be careful with my chubby self) and placed on a blanket with lots of parsley! My piggy buddy Flashbang Fatbottom got to join me too, he hung out in a cool box. We both ate a lot of parsley and when we were done we went back to our pigloos. I got to wear a fancy chapeau, too!

Agent Cannonball - Me was put into a box and couldn't find a treat at first. Me sat quietly but still no treat. So me ran around and bulldozed the entire set to find it, but me still couldn't find the treat! Then me was put back into my pigloo. Then me received treats! Finally!!

Halloween Pigtures

Agent Momma with her babies Ariel on the left and Agatha in the Pumpkin

Haven't the babies got big, we wonder how much they weigh now?


Agent Bumblebee in the Pumpkin and Agent Dinosaur in Front

They look like they enjoy halloween but do they like pumpkin?

Ghost

Halloween Report

Agent Big Red reporting.

 

Here is a Halloween pigture from the Piggyfriends. This piggy's name is Halloween as that was the day, in 2006, upon which our Slave went to collect him and his friend Hope. He is a Harlequin piggy.

 

You may notice that this is not a real pumpkin ( it would be hard NOT to notice ). Slave made this pumpkin in her pottery class many years ago. They were supposed to be making plain coiled pots but Slave improvised. She left it to dry, intending to glaze it the next week but the class was cancelled due to severe weather. When classes resumed, she found that the pottery teacher had "helped" by glazing everybody's work but she had used brown glaze instead of orange.

 

Slave didn't really mind as it meant that her pumpkin was ready to be lit and placed on our garden wall on October 31st. and the colour doesn't notice in the dark.

 

Slave first tasted pumpkin on a visit to the US and never wanted to repeat the experience ( no offence intended to you pumpkin lovers out there ) so we don't have pumpkin to eat.

 

When Slave was little, her granny always made a Halloween lantern out of a swede or turnip from the garden and Slave carries on this tradition. She celebrates this day as Samhain ( pronounced sowain ) which is the Celtic festival to mark the end of summer. Samhain means "summer's end" in Gaelic. It represents the death of the summer sun god, Lugh. Slave gets miserable at this time of year as she hates the cold and dark English winter. We don't like it either as there is less grass for us to eat and our favourite tasty weeds are killed off by the frost but we don't think that pumpkin will be on the menu any time soon.

 

Pumpkins do appear in the shops in the UK these days but some people grow them to enter "heaviest pumpkin" competitions, for which there are prizes. The world record for a pumpkin is held by a grower in the US but, considering our short growing season, some very large ones have been grown here.

 

On behalf of the Piggyfriends, Happy Halloween everyone!!

Piggy Snap Lemon Agouti

Hurray we have another Lemon Agouti piggy snap lets meet agent DJ.........



Agent DJ



Greetings Agent Ghost! I would like to become Agent DJ. I just found out today that I'm a Lemon Agouti after seeing all the pretty pictures of the lovely sows on your web site. The humans who we share our home with did not know what I was, besides adorable, until today. They named me after another beloved piggie, who was also a Lemon Agouti.

I enjoy eating hay and carrots and fighting with my roommate Chakalaka. Sometimes the humans separate us when we fight, but we get very upset when we are apart. Chakalaka would make a good agent too, but he's not an agouti. I think he is a dust mop.

The human has attached a recent photo of me. Maybe if I can be an Agent, they will stop calling me Baby DJ, and I can be Agent DJ instead. That would be great. I am not a baby. I am eight months old now and weigh 2.86 pounds. I am trying to gain more weight so I can weigh more than Chakalaka some day. He's more than three pounds, but I think that most of that is fur.

Please let me know if I can join your group. Even though I had a heart problem when I was younger, I'm sure that I can be a great agent.

Best Wishes,

Agent? DJ

Welcome Agent DJ we are glad to have you on board maybe you could write and tell us about your heart problem we love sharing medical advice here to help other piggies.

Now everypig else your clues to DJ's real name.... its a welsh name meaning from the ocean and is also the surname of a very famous american singer song writer whose first name was Bob.

Get Guessing

Ghost

Piggy snap: Lemon agouti's

Lets meet the lemon agoutis......

Agent Not So Lil Woop

Agent A for Agouti



Mystery Agent Avatar

Lets meet the new mystery agent......

I am going to pick the agent name of Avatar.

I picked this because Slave enjoyed the film of that name ( and there is a link between it and my real name ). They wouldn't let guinea pigs into the cinema so we will have to wait until it comes on the television.

My favourite food is fresh grass with cucumber a close second.

I love playing with the girls in my group.

I am a nurse piggy when we have virtual adventures

Agent Avatar is a female piggy living in a mixed herd in the UK her real name is the same as a very famous box in Greek mythology and also the planet in a recent 3D film she has given you that clue already in her choice of agent name.

So get guessing

Tribute to the Apple

Hi All!

Miss Yaya here, aka the Guinean Queen, aka Agent Piggy Galore. Apples are absolutely AWSOME!! I love Apples soooo much! No other veggie tastes as great as an Apple; that perfect balance between sweet and sour.. ow and don't get me started om the crunchyness or the different textures while you chew through an Apple *swoon*. I do not know what I like more, the skin with it's sour aftertaste, the flesh or the crunchy bits of the core. But anyhew... I LOOOOVEE APPLES!!!

*hemhem*

Apple dearest...

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade*,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

*that is.. until I devourst thy

Slave tends to forget I like apples, she buys them far too little and when she does, she often forgets to feed them to me. She sits on the couch and chews happily away. Whenever that happens I wheek up a storm and make her feel VERY guilty (well, she should anyway... The ladybug-Apple in the pigture is  Slave+Apple+Guilttrip ;-) )

Lots of Wheeks! And may ye have bountiful of apples (or something like that anyways.. ;-) )

Miss Yaya

Vote for the christmas mouse

Sorry, It's no longer possible to vote
----
Hi all,

On twitter we follow Puppy the Guinea pig.
He is a special pig who is the CEO of Puppy love jewelry, and also has a webcam channel like us... He also has his own harem of sows as he's an international superstar... the PIHAS: Puppy's International Harem of Attractive Sows.
Every year his slave, who makes the jewelry, will hold the Christmas Mouse competition. As our slaves always called us Mice, inspired on how our aunts Guiny and Lotje looked when they were still pups, we like this christmas mouse competition! Slave says the pigtures are adorable.
See them and vote for your favorite here

The Guinygirlz,
Pihas Members...

Veggie of the week - Apple

Agent Silver Streak reporting in.

 

Slave took some pigtures at the weekend of those of us who had grown since the last photoshoot. She said that these were the last days of summer and she wanted to take outdoor pigtures so that our eyes did not look red with the camera flash.

 

Silly Slave. Elliot has red eyes anyway.

 

She used pieces of apple and cucumber to bribe the subjects to sit still on a garden chair and had her son nearby in case any of us made a bid for freedom.

 

Here is my best friend Elliot with his apple. He cleared it up as soon as the pigtures had been taken.

Caplin rous chillin out

Dear all,

We have a friend on twitter it's the biggest rodent we know!
He is a capybara, and he agreed to answer some of our questions.
So what do you want to know about Capabara's?
Post your questions here, we will ask him on twitter, so please make you messages no longer than 140 characters... So we can easily tweet your questions to him.

You can follow him on twitter, read his website Giant Hamster
and there even is a Capybara soft cuddly toy and a book for sale!
He's also on Facebook as Caplin Rous and his FB fan page is Caplin Rous, the World's Most Famous Capybara!

The pigture above is Caplin Rous (=rodent of unusual size) relaxing,
see how he puts his paws in front of himself too!
so it's not just a guinea pig thing, maybe all rodents do it?

Report by @guinygirlz : Lily'explorer, lil'wheeker, lil'woop (compared to Caplin!) and Agent Valentino

Fatty Eye

Agent Silver Streak reporting on a Guinea Pig Health Issue.

If you look at my pigture, you will see that the lower part of my eyelid looks strange. This is a condition called Fatty Eye and I believe that in the US they call it Pea Eye as well. It is not caused by me being a fat piggy as I am one of the smallest of the boars at Piggyfriends. I run around a lot and am definitely not fat.

It is just a bulge in the lower eye muscle and is nothing for Slaves to worry themselves about. It doesn't bother me one bit but our Rodentologists have said that surgery is possible if it affects the vision.

I have read that this may be hereditary but my mother and siblings do not have it so that may not be true.



For those of you waiting to find out Agent Silver Streak is also known as Dorian Piggyfriend

Thanks for your report Silver Streak

Ghost

Veggie of the wheek: Carrots

It's time for another veggie,

this is not our favorite but it's okay, Here our slave buys the variant that has slender carrots and with the green tops still on.
Some supermarkets have a trashcan next tot the carrots so you can throw away the tops before you leave the store! Why would you do that? All these lovely lush green tops, what a waste!
Here you see us enjoying some carrot tops, Yum!

Btw, we even read on a website (see below) that you humans can eat the carrot tops, Well don't get any ideas (the website has recipes) and just keep those tops coming towards us!

Here's a pigture of our Daisy eating a carrot,
She shows the version where you keep your (little) paw on top of the carrot for eating comfort, and it helps to keep your carrot safe from veggie snatchers...

The nutritional value of the carrot according to guinealynx is:

Guinea Lynx'
VEGETABLE CHART
100 gram Percent Energy Protein Ascorbic Calcium Phosph. Ca:P
portions Water (Kcal) (g) Acid(C) (mg) (mg) Ratio
Carrots, Baby 89.81 38 0.84 8.4 23 38 0.6:1
Carrots 87.79 43 1.03 9.3 27 44 0.6:1
Source
Also we must mention Carrots are pretty high in sugar, It's okay for healthy piggies we guess, but if you have diabetes as a piggy, this veggie should be avoided....

Did you know England has an actual Carrot museum!!
It says on their website that the Dutch have bred the carrot to become orange
"A tale, probably apocryphal, has it that the orange carrot was bred in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century to honour William of Orange."
More on their website: http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/

Well, Do show or tell us what kind of carrots you eat!

Guinea pig bloat

Hi there. Came across your website today and thought I'd contribute this. Don't know if you're still up and running but thought it worth trying.

 

We've had 3 cases of bloat in guineas so far and have treated 2 successfully after losing the first pig due to our personal and our vets' ignorance. My first piece of advice is to always treat withboth antibiotics and a fungle treatment when confronted with bloat, as it is practically impossible to tell which kind of bacteria is causing it without some intrusivce and dangerous testing. We always use Ceptrin, and Nystatin together. Ceptrin twice a day at 0.6 ml per kilo of weight and Nystatin once a day at 1 ml per kilo of weight. The Nystatin apparently has no side effects as many other fungle infection treatments do so it is a good option. Ceptrin is also much better than Baytril for treating for bloat. I personally don't rate Baytril very highly at all for dealing with any piggy complaints.

 

I aggree that giving Infacol is a great idea, I personally would give 1 ml roughly 3 times a day, to ensure it does it's job well. Keeping them moving is good too. I've never heard of giving olive oil before but am intending to try it out in our latest case of bloat. Also, Buscopan is a good pain killer and helps immensely. The recommended dose I've found online is 1 tablet crushed in about 2 ml of water an syringed to piggy. I also give Metacam too, roughly 0.2 ml per kilo, but you don't want to overload an already struggling system with too much new medication.

 

Also, my main discovery has been the giving of Lactobacillus, one capsule opened up and put in to about 15 ml of water, and then about half of this or more if piggy will take it, given once a day helped immensely with our pigs. I get this from health shops, try to get the dairy free varietty. This bacteria is not usually present in the gut but seems immensely useful in times of crisis. It can be found in Avipro, the probiotic also, but never seems to help in the same way in that form, for some reason.

 

I also recommend not feeding green veggies or fruit when trying to get rid of bloat, it can't help. Just hay and critical care, and leaving some of their regular nuggits around should be enough. Orange seems palitable though and in it's case the vitamin C and natural sugar can give a much needed boost. Personally I wouldn't let my guineas graze on grass when they have bloat, but that's personal choice. I would always recommend a good grass hay like meadow hay, rather than something Alfalfa based or anything like Timathy hay because this may be a bit too rich in ill piggy's systems.

 

Hope this contribution will be of some use to you. Feel free to change lay out or whatever, I realise this is a bit slapdash. Also, piggy owners out there stick up to your vets! Present them with the success of others who have treated bloat and insist they use the correct drugs and the correct doses. I've been walked all over by vets in the past and lost so many dear pigs, but it won't happen again! Their the vet, but your the poor sole who has to sit and watch and feel useless if piggy gets worse and you don't know what to do. Never be left feeling that if only you'd stood up for your piggy they might have given this or that, and because they didn't you're now blaiming yourself! It's not worth the heartache for you or piggy! Be strong piggy owners everywhere! And vets, please get your acts together! We are only interested in our pets' health and well being, not in having a row and hurting feelings!

 

If possible, would you mind sending me a brief message to let me know whether or not this information has been of any use to you and your informative site?

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Kaycee.

Veggie of the Wheek: Chicory

Agent Carrot reporting.

 

As we have been talking about Chicory ( yum yum ) I thought that you might like to see what it looks like when it is growing so here is a picture of a plant in Slave's garden. This is how it looks before it is blanched to make the chicons that we know and love.

 

The leaves have to be cut off later in the year and the plant put somewhere dark and warm so that the chicons can grow.

Veggie of the Wheek: Chicory

Agent Badger reporting.

 

Slave took us outside today to mow the lawn and there was a photo opportunity as the sun was shining..

 

Here is a pigture of our friend Peony demonstrating the art of eating chicory. She is not an agent but Slave thought that this was a good pigture for me to submit. Usually the chicons are broken into pieces but today she used whole ones to bribe us to keep still for the photos. It worked.

 

Yum yum!

Agent Weigh-in

Hello, I finally managed to get my Aunty Loosy to buy some new scales and check it I was weighed. My weight is 2lb 6, 1/4oz (don't forget that 1/4 oz), I'm sad not to be able to join LAPS yet but have a strict eating regime planned over the winter. We also weighed my little sisters, Agent Beefy (2lb 4,1/8 oz) and Agent Marshmallow (2lb 3, 1/8 oz).

Veggie of the wheek: Chicory

Hi fellow veggie lovers,

This is Agent Not-so-lil'Woop. Our all time favorite veggie is chicory!

Here we will tell you more about this vegetable, because we understand many piggies outside the Netherlands have never had this! What a shame, we loooooooooove it.
Some slaves eat it, it's pretty bitter, but it's supposed to be nice with ham and cheese out of the oven.. Yeah right!

According to Guinealynx this is the nutritous value of Chicory per 100 grammes:
Guinea Lynx'
VEGETABLE CHART Endive, Belgian
100 gram portions (Witloof Chicory)
PercentWater 94.52
Energy(Kcal) 17
Protein(g) 0.9
Ascorbic Acid (C) 2.8
Calcium(mg) 19
Phosph.(mg) 26
Ca:P Ratio 0.7:1

How do we eat Chicory?
First all gather around the edge of the cage where the veggies are distributed.

Then after you get a piece there are several options:
You either just eat it in the corner where you got it, this is for confident piggies like me!

Or you hide in the house, and this is important(!), put your butt in the door opening so others cannot get in to take your chicory.

And be sure to stretch for those veggies, like Daisy is showing us here

Do feel free to play a little tug-of-war, and steal your cagemates piece!

And don't forget to have a sip of water after if thirsty, see Chico's demonstration.


And as an extra, for you confident piggies: Eat the chicory out of your slaves hand!
I am the only one who dares to do this at Guinygirlz Mansion.


Please let us know if you ever get Chicory and show us how you eat it!

Squeakers in the Garden

Well you have seen the Squeakers having floor time in the shed, now you can see them having floor time in their purpose built outdoor housing.

There are 2 pens one is 8 foot by 8 foot and the other is 8 foot by 10 foot, they are fox and rat proof, little mice can get in but I dont mind little mice they are kind of cute.

Now lets see the Squeakers in action............




Ghost

Agent Cannonball Weigh-in Report

This is Agent Cannonball and me has been trying very hard to pack on the ounces. Me finally achieved my goal of 3 lbs (1360 grams) and am now able to join LAPS! Here I am being weighed (me overheard that me barely fit on the scale, me is proud) and discussing secret piggy plans.

Supa Sekrit Agent Report

> Hello Supa Sekrit Agent Peegz, is me, Agent Lettuce.
> The last few weeks have been a wee bit traumatic at Peeg palace, mah
> big sisty, Irene, went off to the GP Palace in the sky. Our hoomin,
> Aunty Loosy was veh sad but seems to be ok now. This means the pod
> is aaaaall mine now and there is nobody to pee at me or steal my noms!
> Then there was a horrwid surprise, my little sistyz, Snuggles and
> Tufty came to stay. FOR A FORTNIGHT! I suppose it was quite nice to
> see them and have some company but I quite like being the only Peeg
> in the house. Snuggs kept trying to hide under my tummy, what is
> that all about? Tufty is a bit of a biter, she bites the hoomins
> sometimes but seems to be calmer. We did lots of floortime and some
> grass hoovering, they are making good agents-in-training. Aunty
> Loosy is sending me to stay with them for a week soon, I hope they
> are less annoying than they were this visit.
>
> Agent Lettuce out.
>

Piggyfriend agent's weigh-in.

All of the Agents at Piggyfriends were weighed this afternoon. Slave is tired after all that heavy lifting so Agent Minty is typing this message. Slave apologises for the lateness of my report.

 

Agent Badger        5 years 3 months    2lb. 12oz.    ( 1K 200 )

Agent Thorntons    3 years 5 months    3lb.  1oz .    ( 1K 400 )

Agent Big Red       2 years 1 month      3lb.  10oz.   ( 1K 640 )

Agent 101               2 years 2 months    3lb.  1oz.     ( 1K 400 )

Agent Carrot           Age unknown          2lb. 12 oz.   ( 1K 250 )

Agent Minty             1 year 9 months      2lb. 9oz,      ( 1K 280 )

 

Agent Thorntons has been on an exercise regime and has lost 3 ounces. He looks the same size to me. From these weights it seems to me that Agent Big Red needs to run around a bit more.

 

Slave did the conversions from our familiar pounds and ounces to metric so if they are wrong please blame her. She can't do metric and used the GuineaLynx chart.