B is for Brownie

Our current herd has no piggies who's names begin with B.

But we did have a Brownie once - she was sweet as could be! 

She'd snuggle and kiss and never would miss

A chance to show off her great piggy lips!

Brownie was a pig we had for only a short while but she was awesome!  

One of our piggies died unexpectedly and the two remaining pigs were very sad.  Brownie's friend had also died the same day as ours, and she was so sad she stopped eating.  Her family was looking to find a home where Brownie could live the rest of her days with other piggies, as they weren't able to add more furry family members at the time (brownie was 5.5 years old at this point).  

She integrated very easily into our small herd and was loved dearly.  Sadly Brownie had a heart condition and she passed away as a result of it just two short months later.  We didn't have her for long but she made a big imprint on our hearts!  She was so sweet and outgoing and had the cutest bum we'd ever seen!  One tuft of brown fur curved left and one tuft of orange fur curved right, giving her the perfect heart-shaped bum!  We could never get enough of it.  Don't you think it's cute?! 

A Piggy A-Z. B is for Banana

Not all piggies enjoy bananas. Of our current herd, less than half like banana but Lola Piggyfriend loves it.

"Please peel a banana for me. I only have about an inch at a time but banana is yummy!" says Lola.

Some of the Piggyfriends like the peel too but it needs a wash first and the sticky label removed.

Slave says that banana is like Marmite - one either detests it or loves it - she hates both. Her deputy Slave loves both and takes a banana to work with him every day.

Piggies that would normally run and hide from a banana will often enjoy it as part of a syringe feeding regime. It is easy to mash and draw up into a 1ml. syringe. Bananas are especially useful for a piggy suffering with diarrhoea as they are an important source of potassium, which is quickly lost at this time.

Do any piggies reading this like banana?

We are still hoping that a piggy whose name begins with a B will send in his/her pigture. Slave is always sneaking up on us with her camera but we love to see other piggies too.

B (Piggy A-Z): Introducing Agent Bouncy ball

Hi all,

Here another post for B in the piggy A-Z series.
My name is Tijger (this means Tiger in Dutch) and since a week or two I have reached agent weight, which means I am now a 1000 grammes or one kilo(gram)! *Proud* I am now 9 months old...

So slave decided I will be agent Bouncy ball, because I can be really active and bouncing through the cage. Also when sitting on slave's lap, I cannot sit still. Have you ever seen the video slaves made of me? I wasn't freaking out or anything I am just that hyperactive ;)

Tijger is not a #lap piggy, she will not sit still, she gets that from her dad ;) #adventurous #guineapig

A video posted by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Aug 2, 2015 at 4:49am PDT

So in my new role as an actual undercover agent Bouncy ball(!) I will give a little report on what just happened this evening...

This is me, enjoying one of my favorite activities:
Eating

Mommy was loudly playing something called 'Christmas songs', singing and dancing along, as dad brought some big green thing down. They have a plastic one due to dad being allergic to practically anything (plants and animals). Luckily one of the few things he did not test as allergic for are us piggies :)

Then mom started to put lights in the green thing she calls a tree. They are quite pretty, she is happy that this year she finally has colored LED lights. Roos tells me she is happy with these new lights as well, which are either on or off, as the old one had 7 settings, mostly flashing the lights in different sequences or speeds...

Then mom put all kinds and sizes of colored balls in the tree, she looked proud after having put all the christmas ornaments we own in the tree. Apparently she never managed to do that before...

Then she found out she had one unused chain of lights, well, next to the flashing one, and she decided to decorate our cage as well...

What do you guys think? At first we were a bit apprehensive, but we are fine with them now. She also added some tinsel, and a few ornaments. Quite some years ago, the year Woopy was born, that was back in 2007, mom got a few wooden guinea pig ornaments from Tammy of Cavymadness as part of a secret santa gift exchange.

Here you can see Berke with the piggy ornament looking into our cage

Berke stuffing his face,
with the wooden ornament observing him

Well, I hope you liked my report, we would love to see how your cages look!

Signing off,
Agent Bouncy ball

A Piggy A-Z. B is for Bosworth Piggyfriend

We think that we have exhausted "A" so we are moving onto B in our Piggy A-Z.

This is me, Bosworth aka Agent Plantagenet. I am a silver/grey Ridgeback boar with ruby eyes. Slave has a thing for piggies with red or ruby eyes ( although she loves us all equally ). As you can see, I enjoy tearing up a box with my friend, Rafferty.

Here I am again. Slave tried to take a photo showing my ridge but, because I am a self coloured piggy, it doesn't show up very well. Never mind. I know that Jim, Agent F1, has the same problem. Show Ridgebacks have a much more pronounced ridge along their backs so I would never win a prize but who cares? I'd rather eat than be taken to a show.

And here I am again with my best friend, Rafferty. He is a Peruvian so has a long time to wait until we get to "P" or "R" so he is getting a preview here. He is a pure bred Peruvian but Slave cuts his coat so that he see and play. We both love grass, parsley and dandelions.

Are you a piggy whose name begins with "B"? If so, we'd love to see your pigture and you can add a story too if you wish. It is as easy as sending an email with an attachment. Find the Contribute button at the top of our page, click on it and follow the very easy instructions. Later on we will post other piggy related topics beginning with B.

A Piggy A - Z. A is for Antibiotics

Sometimes piggies get sick and we need to be given Antibiotics to make us well again. At Piggyfriends, we use what is called Septrin in England but this is known by other names as you can see on our bottle, which was sent to us from the US and has the name Sulfamethoxazole and Trimethoprim on the label. That's a lot for a piggy to type and spell right! This is very safe for piggies and has a nice flavour too. This one is grape but we usually have banana. It is a suspension and needs to be shaken vigorously to mix the ingredients. We are given 1ml. twice a day. That's a 1ml syringe in our photo so we have a full one for each dose.

Our vet keeps baytril, tribrissen and marbocyl and these are piggy safe but baytril can cause an upset tum so Slave sticks to our Septrin.

Some antibiotics are deadly for piggies. We must never be given penicillin. Our Slave knows only too well how dangerous this is as she was given it as a child in hospital and suffered anaphylactic shock.

Slave decided it was too risky for one of us to sit on the shiny kitchen counter for this photo so we have used stand-ins. These piggies were a present from Slave's son on her birthday. We love them as they don't eat our veggies.

Go Fish! Card Game: 11 sets of guinea pigs

Hi all,

As mentioned before we are planning to have a game with pigtures of all our lovely guinea pigs for sale, instead of the Calendar we have done before.
Mieke just recently received the try-out print of our card game, and she is thrilled to show it to you!

Here you can see all 11 sets of Guinea Pigs. The categories are:
Smooth-hairs, (Indiana) Smoothhairs, Smoothhair Piggyfriend,
Smoothhair Guinygirlz, Smooth-haired Agents, White Smoothhairs,
Rex or US Teddy, Rexes or US Teddies, Flower Rexes and Teddies,
Crested piggies, Abbies & Alpacas

Spooky, our late spokespig of the piggypals,
can be admired on the back of the cards

As we did before we want to sell as many of these sets as possible, and all the 'profit' that is made will be donated to a guinea pig shelter somewhere in the world. You can nominate shelters and vote for your favorite as usual.

So if you are interested, you can sign up now!

We hope to be able to sell them at a price of 12,50-15 euros plus costs for shipping form our home in the Netherlands. The game includes a full colour card game with 11 sets of 4 guinea pigs. The card are nice and firm and a normal card game card size. You also get a box to put the game in with the logo of the printer (Gozi) on it, unless we get to order 50 or more sets at once then we can have Spooky on the box...

The size of the cardgame allows Mieke to send the games in an envelope, so costs should be around 5- 6 euro to the US, UK, around 3 euros for neighbouring countries like Belgium and Germany.

As Mieke hasn't given you the exact price of the game yet (depends on how many orders we get), you can sign up conditionally. If the eventual price is too high, let us know and you will not be bound to taking the order. You can find the sign up form here

A Piggy A-Z - A is for Agent

A is for Agent, without whom this blog would not be written as we depend on our Undercover Piggies to bring us all of these stories and pigtures.

We would like to introduce two new Agents, Cosmo and Casper Piggyfriend. We are not sure if they have actually reached Agent weight as they do not sit on the scale long enough for our Slave to read it but they certainly put away the veggies and they have grown a lot since they arrived here as little piglets.

Here is Cosmo, doing what he does best - eating.

And here is his close-up.

Below is his best friend, Casper. They are not brothers, all though they look almost identical but were part of a huge rescue and are probably related somehow.

"What?" says Casper. "You do not expect me to come out in the open to have my photo taken!" This is the best that we could do.....

He wanted to stay under his pigloo! How do we tell them apart? Other than that Cosmo is the brave one and Casper is the scaredy-pig, Cosmo has a grey nose and Casper's is pink.

They have chosen the joint name of the Dangermice as their Agent name. For overseas readers, Dangermouse is a secret agent cartoon mouse and he is white as well. He is a lot braver than our Casper but Cosmo reckons that he is tough enough for both of them.

When they were little, Slave called them her sugar mice, after the candies that she loved as a child and the name stuck.