Vote for your favorite Pigmas piggies

You can vote until Sylvester night (31 december 2011 23:59 CET)

Links to all the Pigmas posts:
Flower
Misfits: Agents Tiny and Addytude
Agents Ghost & Iron Hamster
Piggyfriends: Agents Firenze & Mystery
(uncooperative) Guinygirlz
Agents Butterloaf, Cannonball and New Agent
Cali Cavy Collective (Merry Pigmas)
Cali Cavy collective (More Christmas greetings)
Tasty Pigmas

We wish you a tasty Pigmas

We wish you a tasty Pigmas from the Netherlands! The guiny girlz are staying over at our house, while moms and dad are racing through the Netherlands, visiting grannies, grandads, uncle Rik and friends. Our Pigmas is extra special this year because we have a new boar. His name is Sjeuf, which is a local name from the south of the Netherlands. You can pronounce it like 'shuv', it's short (and dialect) for Joseph. Which is kinda appropriate this time of the year ;-)

Love and Wheeps, Coco and Bo

Coco and Bo enjoying chicory with new addition Sjeuf

A dreamy white Pigmas with Lily, Daisy, Chico and Woopy

nom nom nom

Full bellies, happy piggy faces

Hey mom and dad! *wave*

More Christmas Greetings from the Cali Collective

Merry Pigmas from the Cali Collective

Hello,


Agents Pirate, Magician, Godiva, Acorn and Mango want to wish everybody a very merry Pigmas! Wishing that everypiggy gets heaps of vegetables and cuddles this holiday season.

Merry Pigmas

Merry Pigmas from Agent Butterloaf, Agent Cannonball, and a new Agent that has yet to decide on his super secret agent name (new agent is the red crested piggy)!

Merry Pigmas from the (uncooperative) Guinygirlz

I tried to get some nice Xmas pigtures of my little herd together but they weren't very cooperative...

I did get some nice shots from individual pigs so I'll post those

lil'Woop next to the christmas stable
(I like it because you can burn a candle in it, and it is nice an small)

Daisy in her cutest pose next to the christmas tree

Agent Wheeker

Agent Valentino

lil'Woop peeking out

Lily'explorer peeking over the christmas ornaments...

In the rest of the pigtures they were mostly wrecking the props...
Btw, this is the base of their new cage (will be a 1,22 by 1,22 meter cage :)

Life's hard sometimes for slaves with uncooperative pigs, but I hope you like these single shots!

Slave Mieke

Igor's PLAY - Baskets

*Yawn* .. a very relaxed PLAY-project this time.. gotta love my job..

What is it?
Concept: A nice and cuddly object to lounge in.


Material: Fabric and stuffing. Preferably with a thick edge to put your head on.

Application: Climb in your basket and start relaxing.. Drape your neckflabs (if present) over the edge, eyes in sleeping position…dream away about carrots and Mavis..

Do-it-yourself-factor?: This is actually something you buy in a pet shop. But my favourite basket has been handmade by auntie Guiny's slave. I don’t know how she was able to get it so comfortable. Sowing a basket like that is something for the more advanced sewing slave.

Variations: Yes of course you can lounge extremely well in a basket, but they have more uses. I myself use it as a toilet. I happen to think this is very hygienic of me, since my slave only has to scoop out the poos and the cage stays nice and clean (if only the ladies would understand this.. *sigh*). It is also makes a nice hayrack, this way you can have a snack while studying for a master's degree in Piggin' out..

Target audience?:

First and foremost, it is intended for the lazy cavies among us. Yes okay, you can eat from it (as suggested above).. but I have a feeling our slave hides the hay just about everywhere nowadays. Not that I mind, by the way ;-)

Dangerous?:


No, not really. Even our wrecker Yaya hasn't done anything dangerous with this. It has no sharp edges and we don't eat it. Our slave can leave the basket in the cage without supervision.

User experiences?:

(Yaya): Yes lovely! The only thing missing are MORE baskets. That way Suus or Igor would not need to kick me out when I am lounging comfortably. The baskets are also very comfy for my painful paws (because of my OD ); it's even better with a snuggle safe or a flat hot water bag below it, to keep me and my bones nice and warm.

(Suus): Yes, the basket is also a lot of fun for under the hammock (I call that setup the bunk bed). It feels just a bit safer with a roof over your head and it sure is funny bouncing your cagemates out of the hammock from underneath *evil grin*.


Well dear pigs, that’s it for now. I’m going back to my basket, and continue to study comfortably.


Professor Igor

Igor's PLAY - FoodBall

....in the forward line we see Igor.. front right is Suus doing a give and go with midfield player Yaya and skillfully passes the ball to Igor the terrible.. Igor accepts the ball perfectly .. oooh.. he makes an overhead kick and.. WHEEEEEEEK!!!! IGOR SCORES A CARROTPELLET!!

What is it?

Concept:Playing Foodball is playing with a special ball with yummies inside.
Material: You need a foodball. This is a ball made of plastic with a little sliding window in it. With this little window you can determine the size of the hole. You also need something Yummie that will fit inside. We prefer to use pellets from a different brand than our daily pellets. They are tasty and healthy. There is also special candy for guinea pigs for sale that you can use. Allthough this is a possiblity, these snacks tend to be too salty and unhealthy. Usually you are allowed to have two of them (a day), but this is not very practical when you are foodballing with a whole team. Unfortunately veggies are also not suitable; they stick and can leave bits behind in the foodball that go bad.

Application: Your slave should put something tasty in the ball and then lay it on the floor. Then the game is on!! You push the ball with your nose which will make it start rolling. If you do this right, the pellets ought to fall out of the ball every now and then. I have to say, this is not easy! If there's no pig around to show you how, it can take a while before you understand how to play this game. Luckily, I learned from Suus and Yaya, who in their turn, learned from Auntie Guiny (who else ;-) ).

Do-it-yourself-factor?: Not that high; the ball has to be bought in a pet shop. But it is possible to make one yourself. Your slave has to buy a little plastic bottle in the supermarket and empty it. Then she can cut some holes in it with scissors. Add pellets and there you go! (your slave does have to make sure that we cannot hurt ourselves)
Variations: You can do this as a team or solo. Your slave can also put boxes on the floor so you can manoeuver the ball through.

Target audience?

This is certainly something for the intellectuel cavy. Auntie Guiny was always very good at getting the ball out of small corners when it got stuck. Because there are yummies inside, it is also very suitable for the food oriented guinea pigs. And because you also get some excerise it is also a challenge for the sporty cavies among you.

Dangerous?

No, not really. Although I must insist that supervision of your slave is neccesary, you'll never know what we'll come up with. And besides, it is also very entertaining to watch, especially for daddy slaves.

 
User experiences?

Suus: Really cool game! Although it helps if slaves make sure we do not run out of pellets. It is very challenging to get the pellets out of the ball before your team mates. By the way, I always play for the Netherlands.. I'm already wearing orange socks..
Yaya: When slave introduced the ball again I was the only one who could remember how to play Foodball! Hahhah.. Good huh? ;-)

(Igor): Well guinea pigs that's it for this wheek. I will go grab a carrot beer for the third half. *snigger*.. *stagger*.. Laaalala Blaaaaack pants, Ooorange shirt, thaaaaat is the Winky herd. Holahee dee holala...hooolahee dee hoo laalaalaa...*


Professor Igor


*This is actually the song (in adapted form) that the fans of a soccer club from a small dutch village sing to encourage their team. Our slaves were born in this village and accidentely, Igors furcolors match their gear

Small preview of the Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2012

Today I ordered the first Calendars we are selling.
The profit we make will be donated to a Guinea Pig Shelter.
Here's a small preview of how the standard desk calendar will look:

You can however also order a wall calendar, which is bigger and unfortunately also more expensive (20 euros)! The first 5 orderers will get this version for the low price of the desk calendar (if they want to, of course). The wall calendar looks like this:

You can still order the calendar from us, you can do so by filling in the form that can be found here.

Feel free to order as many as you like, or notify your friends about this calendar!

Kind regards,
Mieke

Merry Pigmas from Agents Firenze and Mystery

"Who is going to sit nicely for some Pigmas pigtures" said Slave." Not Agent Curly or Halloween because you two were in the last set of holiday pigtures".

Then she saw us two. Agent Firenze was having a nap but that did not prevent her from being picked up and surrounded by festive ornaments and having ribbons stuck in her hair. I don't think that she really minded. Well, it is a girly thing isn't it but then it was my turn.





Now, wearing a Santa hat is one thing but having poinsettias in my hair!! Doesn't Slave realise that under all of this coat I am a BOAR!! And then I got the ribbons too. Pigmas. Bah Humbug!

Don't worry - the poinsettias are artificial. Slave knows that real ones are poisonous.







Happy Pigmas everyone from all of the Piggyfriends, including me, Agent Mystery.

Merry Pigmas from Agents Tiny and Addytude

Merry Christmas to all secret agents from Flower!

Sinterklaas with the Guinygirlz and Agent Valentino

Agent Valentino and the girl agreed to pose with the playmobil Sinterklaas. He's sort of the Dutch Santa, who has his birthday in the 6th of December and brings presents to all kids here in the Netherlands.

lily'Explorer: What's this staff thingy, can I eat that?

Valentino: mmm, is this any good?

All of them Hi Sinterklaas, can we have the spare carrots your horse gets from all the kids?

It is custom for kids to put their shoes somewhere for Sinterklaas and his helpers Zwarte pieten (Black Pete's) and to leave a carrot or something for Sint's horse and maybe a drawing for the Sint.

The zwarte pieten will come during the night, and exchange the gifts for pepernoten (cruchy candies/cookies, and maybe a chocolate character or a small gift.

Well we hope you enjoyed our pigtures. We were not really feeling up to being photographed, cause we were way to excited to be in our new cage to try it out, it HUGE!!

Agents Valentino, lily'Explorer, Wheeker and lil'Woop

Vote for the christmas mouse

It's time to vote for Puppy the guinea pig and his friends again for this years Christmas mouse:
http://stores.ebay.com/Puppy-Love-Jewelry/Vote-for-The-2011-Christmas-Mouse

Order your Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2012

You can now order your Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2012!
Just click on the link in the column on the right.

As some large herds gave us permission to use their agents pigtures, we are now able to easily fill the calendar, but if you want your pig to feature be sure to give us permission.

For those who order before the 5th of December a wall calendar can be made instead of the desk calendar. If you order before that date I will ask you about which type you want: the desk or wall version!


I think it will be easiest if you leave a comment to this post stating:
"I, [insert name], give M and Mieke of the Undercover Guinea Pigs blog permission to use the pictures of my Agent(s), [names of your agents] for a Undercover guinea pigs Calendar."

Vote for your favorite Thanksgiving pigture

Happy Thanksgiving Day

On behalf of all the Piggyfriends and their Slave, Agent Curly ( and friend ) would like to wish all of our friends across the ocean a Very Happy Thanksgiving Day.

Happy Thanksgiving From Newest Misfit Ava and Special Guest AR

Meet the newest Misfit her name is Ava, and AR was here to welcome her. She was brought to the IA humane society by her family. They told the Humane society that she was 4 years old and they were moving and couldn't take her with. She is a very scared girl. She is also pregnant! When we were there to pick out some cat toys for my daughters new cat, we just had to look in the small animal room and there she was scared to death. Andy picked her up and said she is pregnant! we just cant leave her here in this place to have her babies. We do not know anything else about her. Thus she is a mystery to us.. We do not know is she has had babies before or anything. We don't know what kind of food she has eaten before as she wont touch the pellets. (at humane she only had hay!) We have no idea how far along she is. You can feel her sides protrude. And its a mystery how many piggies are in her.



Well done Misfits you must love having minipigs around lol. We love Ava's go faster stripe.

We are going to have a side game like we did for Agent Momma and guess how many minipigs Ava has in her tummy we are going 3, 2 girls and a boy.

Now get sending in your Thanksgiving pigtures we are waiting.

Idea for an Undercover guinea pigs calendar?

Dear readers,

I've had the idea to maybe make a calendar featuring some of our Agent piggies.
With the small profit we would make, we could make a guinea pig shelter happy,
by donating our profit to one selected shelter....
As some of you might know my sister Janneke and I made a calendar of GPDD piggies back in 2008.
It is probably still online, and can be found here: http://www.gpdd.org/calendar
Send us an email for the password...
The idea for the undercover guinea pigs calendar is to order calendars at a printing company, so we will not completely style the calendar as we did for the 2008 GPDD calendar.

But before I start executing my Idea I need your help!
First of all I want to know if you would buy the Calendar at all.
I think a price of 12,50 euro plus Postage an package, should cover the costs and leave some money to donate to a shelter. Is this a reasonable price for you? If not would you buy one for 10 euros??

Then I need your permission for actually using the Pigtures of your agents in the Calendar.
I think it will be easiest if you leave a comment to this post stating:
"I, [insert name], give M and Mieke of the Undercover Guinea Pigs blog permission to use the pictures of my Agent(s), [names of your agents] for a Undercover guinea pigs Calendar."

I'm very curious what your reactions will be!!

Yours truly,
one of the bloggers on the Undercover Guinea Pigs blog,
Mieke

Hay Solutions: Vertical hay rack

This time a special guest post from our fellow agents of the Cali Cavy Collective:

(see the original post here)

Hay is an essential staple of every guinea pig's diet, and should be available for your piggy to munch on freely at all times. One of the things an owner has to decide is how to give hay to their guinea pig. Whee here at the Cali Cavy Collective have experimented with many different methods of hay dispensing and would like to share our experiences with each method.

Revy munching hay from her vertical hay rack

A vertical hay rack is our humans most recent solution to dispensing hay. Ours is a simple DIY version made from bent C&C grids, coroplast and zip ties. It is secured onto the side of the cage with a large binder clip for easy removal.

Whee rather like using vertical hay racks. The one our humans made for us has a coroplast backing and bottom to catch small hay flecks and keep our fleece bedding cleaner. They came up with this idea after seeing the angled hay racks sold at pet stores which they disliked because bits of hay would fall in our piggy eyes. With a vertical hay rack, hay is shoved in through the top so this doesn't happen. Since it is reasonably good sized it can hold a lot of hay at once for your piggy to eat. We can choose to eat from the bottom, or put our paws on the sides of the rack and climb it to reach choice strands. An extra bonus is that this encourages more exercise. Best of all, it keeps us from going potty in the hay so there is no icky odor.

Of course, the vertical hay rack may not be ideally suited for all piggies - lazier guinea pigs might not be motivated to climb or eat from it, we assume this is also true for sickly pigs. It is possible that elderly pigs might not appreciate the extra effort involved to reach the hay. Also, some adventurous pigs could decide to knock down their hay rack - Belka loves to shove it aside and hide behind it, while Revy enjoys tipping it on its side!

So far, we have found that vertical hay racks are the solution that works best for us. Whether you decide this method is best for your piggy though is entirely up to you!

Filled with hay

Front of the vertical hay rack

Coroplast backing of the vertical hay rack

Filled with hay

Revy climbs to reach a tasty strand up top

...and yanks it out!

Piggies aren't supposed to go in the hay rack!

Vertical Hay Rack - Pros
- no odor
- encourages more exercise, can climb it
- vertical design so hay doesn't get in our eyes
- catches hay flecks, keeping the fleece bedding cleaner
- can hold a lot of hay at once

Vertical Hay Rack - Cons
- elderly, ill, or lazy piggies might not be motivated to eat from it
- adventurous pigs can knock it down