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