Friday Video: Fun Treat for Piggies

We have had toilet roll tubes stuffed with hay and they are great fun especially when you hit your cage mates over the head with them **heehee** but we think adding fresh veggies will make them even more fun

Crested piggie

Agent Cookie: Hi, I have a different colour crest. My pals on Twitter call it a pigwig. It's like having a polar cap, except on your head. Cookie x

New Smooth-haired entry

Hi all,

We got this entry on our twitter account @guinygirlz

Meet Piggie Pie as a "Pirate Piggy"!

Crested Piggies

We have had a few Crested Piggies here at Piggyfriends down the years and here are a selection.  Slave calls Crested Piggies " pigs with hats ".

First of all is our dear Gulliver, who grew to be a LAPS member ( Large and Ample Piggy Society ) as you can see in the pigture below. All the good views of him show him looking up at the photographer and this is the only one that we could find showing his crest.

Next you can see Halloween, named because he arrived here on October 31st. and here he is celebrating his special day. He was with us for 8 years, our oldest ever Piggyfriend.

Now you can see Sam enjoying his lunch.

And finally here is Amethyst, who loved to sleep on top of her box.

If any readers have pigtures of their Crested Piggies, please send them in, especially if you have an American Crested. Unlike our Piggyfriends, the American Crested has the crest in a different colour to the rest of the coats. We believe that these piggies have a white crest. The American Crested looks even more like they are wearing hats as the crest shows up so well against the rest of the coat.

If we get enough pigtures of both ordinary cresteds plus American cresteds we might be able to make up a set of both.

Watch out for our next set coming soon..............

Friday Video: Making the Piggy House

We are not actually sure what the title of this video is as it may be in German however we love the end result, enjoy!!

Book Review; Guinea Pig Pride and Prejudice

Last week we were contacted by Bloomsbury publishing to see if we would like to receive a copy of Guinea Pig Pride and Prejudice a new book they are launching we asked Mummy and she got all excited and said yes.

On Saturday the book arrived in the post as you can see from the pigtures below it was beautifully wrapped just like a present (we think it would make a great gift for piggy loving humans)

At bedtime mummy read the story to us its about piggies falling in love despite not liking each other at first.

Mummy loved the cute pigtures especially the cast list and we really liked the smart costumes (you can see some of our favourite shots below)

What we also liked was the message at the back of the book about supporting local shelters well that has our full backing and we are glad to see them get a mention as lots of humans have no idea the piggy rescues exist.

Now enjoy the pigtures and start planning which of your humans has been good enough to get a copy.

abscesses v. sebaceous cysts

Hello everyone, Otto Piggyfriend here.

First of all a warning. Mieke has added a photo of her late piggy, Toby, to this post. Poor little piggy had a nasty abscess and you can see him after it had been lanced. It looks nasty but it might be useful to see how it looks.

You'll remember recently reading the post about Agent F1 aka Jim's sebaceous cyst. It was on August 3rd. Well, at the very same time I had one too. Mine was on my back and Slave might not have noticed it under all my long hair ( in this pigture I have had a haircut but I usually look like a mop ) but the cyst appeared right in the middle of my parting. Like Jim, I had it attended to by an expert - in my case our Rodentologist.

Slave didn't take any photos of this as she forgot to take her camera along but if you look back at Jim's post, you'll see what it looked like. Our Rodentologist shaved off my coat around the cyst, made an incision in it and then squeezed out all the nasty looking contents. He says that piggy skin is like leather! Our Slave can do this herself but what she cannot do is remove the gland underneath. Without this, there is a chance that the cyst will come back. She watched very carefully as he cleaned the area up and then picked out the gland with a pair of tweezers. I was busy watching the squirrels racing up and down the tree outside our Rodentologist's home so I missed it all and never squealed once. After he had removed the gland, he packed the hole where the cyst had been with Dermisol cream ( this is antiseptic ) and I was given lots of parsley to eat, after which we came home. Slave kept an eye on it but it healed up very quickly and now there is nothing to be seen.

These cysts can appear in different places. Our Petunia once had one underneath near her leg.

An abscess is a much more serious matter. This contains a lot of nasty pus, which is toxic, smells horrible and needs careful removal. Rather than just a small lump, which gets bigger slowly, an abscess can come up overnight and can be huge. They are often around the neck area and, because of their position can cause a piggy trouble when trying to eat. Our Rodentologist lances them when they are ready, being very careful of the contents and usually keeps the piggy patient in the hospital until they are better as, although the pus has been removed, more keeps being produced and it fills up again. Constant draining is needed. Some vets will remove the encapsulated abscess under anaesthetic but our Rodentologist does not want to subject a piggy to anaesthesia unless absolutely necessary as it is so dangerous for us. Sometimes a drain is inserted to keep the hole open so more pus can come out or else the abscess can be lanced again as often as is necessary. It can take a long time for an abscess to clear up completely and sometimes there can be a second one behind the first and maybe a third in a chain.

We may need a lot of syringe feeding during this time until we can eat by ourselves again.

Sometimes piggies can get tooth root abscesses and these are very dangerous and hard to treat.

Toby (one of Mieke's late piggies) had an abscess in his cheek,
it might have been in this tooth root, it was very close at least.

Our Rodentologist does not give antibiotics as an abscess is separate from the rest of the body. The word comes from the Latin meaning that it is walled off.

If any of our readers have had experiences regarding cysts or abscesses, they might like to post about it. It is useful to share information and various treatments.