Trying out the treats continued.......

Next we tried the "Vegetable Patch" box. This contained dried carrot, parsnip and flaked peas. We all love flaked peas, which our Slave buys loose from the pet shop and sprinkles on our dishes of nibble.

As we were filling the dish, Slave noticed a sunflower seed in the mix and quickly whisked it out. It is said that seeds present a choking hazard for piggies. We never have them but better safe than sorry.

Louis tried it first as carrots are his absolute favourite veggie. You can see in this pigture how it looked from the start.

He ate some of the carrot flakes and started on the flaked peas. As we all wanted to try this treat, we moved the dish on to the next pen where Fernando had a few pieces but his brother, Martin, was not interested.

Next we gave the dish to Carter, Aoife and Saoirse.

Needless to say, Carter rushed over and had some of this treat and Aoife joined him. Carter says to please forgive the state of their pen but the housekeeper has not been round yet.

Some of us are not fond of carrot so not all the Piggyfriends joined in this taste test but Casper Dangermouse ( below ) had some.

Magnus was not sure about this although he likes carrots and his brother Ivan would not try it so he  is not in this pigture. ( below ).

By the time the dish had gone the rounds, not surprisingly all the flaked peas had gone. No pig wanted to eat the dried parsnip, which was very hard and we never eat parsnip anyway. We could not see the point in having dried carrot and much prefer having a nice fresh carrot pulled from Slave's vegetable garden.

All in all, this "treat" was better than the "Flower Garden" one but we would rather just have our usual flaked peas and fresh carrot.

We might give this 3 stars as some piggies, who are not so fortunate as to have a never ending supply of fresh carrots might like it.

The last treat box is called  "Fruit Garden" and we will be testing this soon so look out for our post.

Testing the new food......continued.

We have heard from a Slave on the GPDD called Chris, who has been trying out the new food and her four girls love it.

Today we have been trying out the "Nature's Feast Snack Selection", which has three different contents. First of all we opened the box called "Flower Garden". The next photo shows you what it looks like.

This is a mix of dried flowers, namely Marigold, Rose, Cornflower and Sunflower. Now, we eat flowers in our daily forage but Slave picks Vetch in season and that is our favourite. We also like Dandelion and Sow Thistle flowers but we always have them fresh. The instructions on the packet are to give out one teaspoon of snack per day but, as there are a lot of us, we decided to pass the dish around from pen to pen.

Now Carter will have a go at any new food and he rushed over to see what was in the dish. He sniffed at it and retreated. His girls did not get any nearer than you can see in this photo.

Fernando also came over to have a look. He did pick up a couple of flowers but dropped them back into the dish and went back to his cucumber.

The instructions on the packet suggest " Hand feeding snacks helps you bond with your pet." Now we could not be more bonded with our Slave but even this could not tempt us to eat these flowers.

"Sorry, Slave." says Niamh. " Even hand feeding will not tempt me to eat this. I am going to hide in this house."

" No thanks," says Otto, " but if you have any Vetch, that would go down a treat."

No pig was interested in this box but the label does say that it is for Rabbits and Hamsters too so maybe they would enjoy it. Sorry but we can't give this any stars. Tomorrow we are going to try another box and that may be more to our liking.

Slave tipped the dried flowers onto her basket of pot pourri.

Raani's eye, a follow up post on eye injuries...

As you know, I posted about eyes a little while ago. It feels like I jinxed it, because just as I posted that, I picked up Raani and her eye was white blueish... Looked like she had something in her eye that damaged it, but as far as I know the blue white color meant it was healing. Of course that meant we had to see our vet and I had to make this follow up post... Since (unfortunately) Raani had so obligingly agreed to demonstrate eye injuries for us ...

Raani eye damage at the vet 

 So, we went to the vet with Raani. I found out about it Wednesday, but it did not look like anything was left in her eye and the vet was really busy. So we had an early morning appointment on Thursday, because we had a wedding in the afternoon where Erwin was best man and I was the person who makes everything go well that day (sort of like a wedding planner). Turned out there was still a bit of hay in her eye (poor girl!)! Our vet tried to get it out, but (of course) it was painful so she tried to sedate the eye with an eye drop. That didn't work and Raani would try to jump up (even though Erwin was pinning her to the table), so the vet obviously did not want to put a pincer near her eye to get the culprit out. So the vet suggested she would give her a bit of gas narcosis to get the thing out safely. So Raani had to stay there. We also took Binky along so he could get used to a trip to the vet, so Binky stayed with her as well. Poor Cookie hates being alone but 3 piggies in a cat carrier seemed a bit much, even if it was for only half an hour. We were optimistic when we went to the vet... 
The vet was also really busy and had a cat that was not doing well at all who needed her attention, so we were getting a bit anxious, because we could not say to the bride and groom that we would be there later... our roles were pretty essential.

Luckily all went well and we could pick up Raani and Binky in time for the wedding. 

 

This was stuck on top of Raani's eye. It was about 7,5 millimeter or 3/4 of a centimetre long.

This is how her eye looked after just a few days of applying the eye salve pictured below. Looks good, huh? I am always amazed at how well piggy eyes heal!

On the package it says it is an antibiotic eye salve with added vitamin A. We had to put a drop of it on her eye 2 to 3 times a day for at least 5 days.

I am glad Raani's eye is looking good again, and hope she or any of my other piggies will not be so willing to demonstrate an injury or ailment again when we write about another in our piggy A-Z.
Mikey, slave to the guinygirlz Raani and Cookie and boar Binky.

Trying out the new food.

"We are going to try out the new bag of food today." announces Niamh Piggyfriend. " Tyrion has sorted out some dishes and we are going to put one in each pen and see who likes it."

Otto tries it first as he is senior pig. " This is yummy, Niamh!" " I tried it and I liked it too," says Niamh, " but you don't want to see my pigture every day."

Here is Louis tucking in. He had a lot of tooth problems when he came to Piggyfriends and is picky about food but he likes this. All Slaves should know that you must never suddenly change our feed  so you can see that Louis has a dish of his usual mix as well as did we all.

Carter is always to the fore when food is on offer and here he is enjoying the new nibble but his girls were not interested in it. "Come and try this!" he says between mouthfuls.

" We cannot let Carter eat it all," say Saoirse and Aoife. " Oh, it is really nice." they agree.

Fernando is enjoying it but his brother, Martin is camera shy. He did join in later but ran and hid when we tried to take a photo.

And here is Casper completing the taste test.

"We tried everypig with the new food," says Niamh," but we are sure that you do not want to see that many pigtures. Everypig enjoyed it and when we have completed our test of the treats, we are going to write to Kirk and tell him about it."

Look out for our next post when we test one of the treat boxes.

We have a surprise parcel!

" Look guys!" calls Otto Piggyfriend. " The postman has brought this parcel and it is addressed to us!"

"See! It has our name on it. I wonder what is inside?" asks Otto as the Piggyfriends gather round to inspect the parcel.

"Let's open it" says Niamh. " I have the scissors." " Be careful with those Niamh," cautions Otto. "They are the ones that Slave uses to cut my hair and they are very sharp."

The Piggyfriends look on in amazement at all the goodies inside. "There is a letter from a nice man called Kirk, who works at Westland Horticultural." reads Niamh. " I've seen Slave using their compost. They are making food for small animals too now and this is a press release telling people all about their new products."

"There are boxes of treats with fruits, veggies and flowers." says Niamh. " We will all try these out and see which ones we like."

Niamh studies a care booklet that came in the package. " I am so pleased that they recommend that we eat grass and hay as those are our favourites. That is a nice photo of a piggy eating parsley." says Niamh.

" Let us try this bag of food first." suggests Niamh. " Go and round up some dishes and I will put some in each for us all to taste. Thank you Kirk."

The Piggyfriends will tell you about their taste testing in their next post.

Note to our readers. If you would like to know more about these foods, go to www.naturesfeast.co.uk, where you can read all about them.

Piggy A-Z: E for Eyes

 I don't know about other guinea pig owners, but we had multiple piggies injuring their eyes, by for example running into a pile of hay with their eyes wide open... emerging with a bit of hay sticking out of the eye

Our Roos was one of the best at getting eye injuries, especially on days when the vets are closed, like new year's day. In the picture below she had scraped the surface of her eye. The vet was a bit afraid it might not heal, but after a week (or two) her eye was completely back to normal.

The vet had not seen eye damages like this before so he took this picture:

Luckily, most of the times it is not too hard for piggy eyes to heal. What our vets have always done is apply this coloured fluid onto the eye. They would then flush the eye clean with a bit of water, the yellow colour that remains on the eye shows where the eye is damaged. As you can see in the pigture Roos pretty much scraped the whole surface of her eye...
Depending on how deep/severe the damage is an eye cream containing vitamin A and with or without antibiotic properties is given. We then needed to apply drops of the cream on the eye, and it seems really miraculous, but so far the eyes have always healed real quickly.

Have your piggies ever damaged their eyes? Do your vets treat it the same way?
Slave Mikey

(Friday) Video: New boar also running

Is it still Friday somewhere in the world? It isn't here in the Netherlands, but we didn't want to deprive you of this video.

I guess we mentioned it before that sadly our boar Bérke had to leave us... 😭😢
Last weekend we got to date with a new boar, so have a look at the handsome boar, named Binky (for now), that we took home with us!
He also enjoys running around the cage (do turn on the sound as you watch, he's a bit heavier thus louder). It's best when we run around the cage with the three of us, but so far we didn't allow slave to catch that on camera...

Our newest addition addition Binky, likes to run just as the girls do #guineapig #running

A post shared by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Jul 27, 2017 at 12:47pm PDT

Friday video: Guinygirlz running together

Since Bérke had to leave the guinygirlz behind, Raani and Cookie have taken up a new hobby of zooming through the cage together.
Whee hope this is a nice start for your weekend!

We have a visitor.

It is far too hot for us to go out and send in reports so we are going to tell you about our visitor.

She is called Torty and she comes to stay with us when her human goes away on holiday. Unlike us, she is safe to be out in the hot weather and she is staying in a little pen on our lawn. Long time readers may have seen her before as she has been coming for many years. She is very old, even older than our Slave. We are somewhat concerned that she is eating OUR veggies but she is very slow and does not seem to need as much food as us piggies plus she does not eat grass so our favourite food is safe.

Here she is again enjoying some tomato. We could eat a whole one in the time it takes her to munch through this little piece but we do not need to worry about a tomato famine as there are lots more ripening in the greenhouse.

We do hope that normal summer weather will return soon as we would like to go out and pick our own grass but Slave takes her shears to work and brings us home lots of good stuff.

A Piggy A-Z. E is for Edvard Munch

Hi!  I'm Edvard Munch, and I live with the Prairie Pigs in Western Canada.  I'm named after a famous Norwegian painter. I'm not very artistic, but I am excellent at munching, so I think that might be why Slave thought that was a good name for a piggy.

Here I am, admiring the most famous painting by that other Edvard Munch, the human one.  It's called The Scream: that's how I feel when the snacks are late!

Speaking of snacks and munching, here I am enjoying my favourite treat: yellow pepper.  Yum!

And here I am with my pal Guinness.  We live next door to each other and share a hay rack.  Guinness is a very calm and thoughtful older piggy who is happy to share his boarly wisdom with me while we are munching away on either side of the hay rack.  His eyes really are that colour!

Now that you've heard from one Prairie Pig, stay tuned for some of my friends who will be reporting in soon when the piggy alphabet project gets to their letter of the alphabet.  Faith and Guinness are already working on their own stories!

In the meantime, are there any other "E" piggies out there?  Esmeralda or Ezekiel possibly?  Check the "Contribute" button at the top of this page --- it's easy and fun to post your own story.  Every piggy deserves their moment in the sun, and who doesn't love looking at pigtures of other people's piggies???

Piggy A-Z: E for eggplant (shaped)

Guess who's the vegetable and who is the piggy?

We think eggplant, or aubergine as we call it, is not suitable for piggies, but a healthy piggy should be eggplant shaped ;)

P.s. Doesn't Raani have the cutest bum? Signed slave to the Guinygirlz, Mikey

Our Pigpenpals have sent us some photos.

We have been sent some photos by our Pigpenpals, Rin, Maki and Nico, who live in Connecticut. As it has been too hot to go out on missions or even into the garden to send in reports, we thought that we would share the photos with our readers.

They were all weighed the other day and above is mama Rin on the scale. She is growing nicely after being rescued.

And here is her daughter, Maki.

And above is her sister, Nico, trying to escape the scale. They are growing up fast and are very fluffy so it is hard to tell which end is which.

And below they all are exploring their home. That is Maki sitting on top of one of their houses.

We love hearing from our Pigpenpals. We hope to send in some reports when it is safe to go outside again. For now we are going back to napping as close to our fans as possible.

It is too HOT!!!

We have a heatwave here at Piggyfriends. The weatherman said that it is hot all over England as this horrible weather has come up from Europe. We should be out on the lawn picnicking on the yummy grass but it is too dangerous for piggies to be out in the heat.

"I am not going out on any missions today, " says Agent Diva aka Mimi. " It is far too hot to do anything except nap in this corner near one of Slave's fans."

" Come and hide under this house Cosmo," says Casper Dangermouse. " Tyrion might see you and send us out."

" There is no danger of anyone being sent out today," say Magnus and Ivan Fluffypig. " Tyrion is fast asleep in the other house. Let us all nap until this horrible heat goes away."

A Piggy A-Z. E is for Escaping!

When we go on missions for Undercover Piggies, we need a strategy so that our Slave does not realise that we have gone out. Here are two examples of how we escape.......

 

 "Tyrion has asked me to go out on a mission when we have finished our grass, Niamh." says Otto. "Can you cover for me whilst I am gone? When people were on lookout, they used to say that they were "keeping cave" and it was pronounced cavy. I think that it might have been Latin." " That's alright Otto, " says Niamh. " I can keep on being a cavy whilst you go out. What disguise do we have?" " I will get Slave's beret. It is hot outside so she will not be wanting it." says Otto.

" No one will notice that this is not Agent Mystery sitting beside me," says Niamh," and I have eaten all the grass. I can keep on being a cavy for as long as he needs. I am not sure that I understood that but Otto is much cleverer than me. That is why I am not an Agent."

" Isn't it exciting, Lulu?" says Mimi. " Tyrion is allowing us to go out on a mission on our own. I am not sure that he really trusts us to behave but we will show him that we are not always Divas."
" Speak for yourself  Mimi," says Lulu. " We will need to find stand ins when we have eaten our grass."

" I think that these two fit the bill nicely," says Mimi. " Do you think that Slave will be fooled?" " She may be surprised that they do not eat that grass, " replies Lulu, " but Slaves cannot be that bright or they would not spend all that time looking after us when they could be eating."

So Agents Mystery and Diva 1 and Diva 2 escape from Piggyfriends to bring back reports from the outside world.

Happy Mother's Day.

In the UK, we celebrate Mother's Day in March and I do not know when it is celebrated elsewhere but I know that today is Mother's Day in the US. I do not have any mama piggies at Piggyfriends at the moment, in fact the majority of our current residents are boars but Junior Slave, who emigrated to the US, has emailed me to tell me about adopting a family of piggies, thus carrying on the Piggyfriends tradition.

Here they are........

........enjoying some dandelion leaves from the garden. The mama piggy has been named Rin, and her daughters are Maki and Nico after Japanese Anime characters. When they were watching them the other day, I am told that Rin actually squeezed through the little window in the Kaytee house. She is obviously more fluff than pig and must have been very young when she had her litter.

Here is their new home.

I wish that I could meet them in person but the Piggyfriends now have three "pigpen pals".

Rin will enjoy a Happy Mother's Day in her new home and I hope that any mamas in the US do too.

From Penny, Slave to the Piggyfriend.

Friday video: Cookie having a run

I don't think we have introduced her yet, about a week after we had to say goodbye to our dear Tijger (this was in January), daddy came home with this cream coloured Cookie monster.
She seems to enjoy herself here, and loves running around and wheek loudly.
Very belated welcome to agent-in-training Cookie!

The guinygirlz Raani, Cookie and boar Bérke

Cookie running around the cage. Bérke patiently awaiting food. Raani munching hay. #cookie #guineapigs @winkyteam @jolepsi @CaviaBendeAlmer @blogparty

A post shared by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Apr 14, 2017 at 10:05am PDT