Happy Seventh Birthday dear Otto.

Today is a very special day at Piggyfriends because our dear Otto is celebrating his seventh birthday and we have made his name out of veggies.

Our Slave was very lucky to be able to give him a home all those years ago. GPDD readers may have read his story before but it bears repeating as it enabled him to come to Piggyfriends. A colleague of her son's at the animal rescue where they worked sent her prize winning white Peruvian sow, at great expense, to a stud boar expecting for her to have a litter of white Peruvians. What she got were three little boars, of whom Otto was the whitest by far but he was born with a head tilt. None of them were suitable for showing so she had them all neutered and sent them to a piggy rescue.

Had she heard this story earlier our Slave would have taken all three home straight away and none of them would have had to be neutered. She found out where they had been sent and, very fortunately, our Rodentologists knew the lady who runs this piggy rescue and called her to say that a home was waiting for them. By this time, only Otto was left as his brothers had already been rehomed.

The piggy rescue lady brought Otto with her when she visited the Rodentologists herself and our Slave went to fetch him home
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So after a roundabout journey, Otto came home.

He found a home with Portia, who had sadly lost her companion and over the years, he has been a kind and gentle friend to many sows who have come our way. When Undercover Piggies was started he became Agent Mystery as, when his coat needs a trim, it is hard to tell which way round he is and Slave has been known to put his veggies at the wrong end even now. He had a haircut before she took these photos so that you can see him properly.

"Happy Birthday dear Otto," says Slave. " You are my little star!"

" Thank you." says Otto," I know that it is your birthday too tomorrow so would you like to share my grass?"

Please join us in saying "Happy Birthday" to our dear friend Otto. We all love you very much.

Friday video: Raani learned to spin

Synchronized standing on hind legs, and Raani learned to do a spin! @blogparty @jstaaks @hyungjacketti @mfug22

A post shared by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Oct 19, 2017 at 12:31pm PDT

Friday(?) Video: guinygirlz and Binky, with Raani washing herself

Mom was busy filming us again. Here you can see us, with Raani grooming and washing herself. Turn on the sound to hear Cookie making noises....

Raani (washing herself) and Cookie and Binky

A post shared by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Oct 14, 2017 at 6:26am PDT

Hope you have a good weekend,
Guinygirlz Raani, Cookie and boar Binky

A Piggy A-Z. F is for Friends and Family

Everyone reading our blog will know that guinea pigs love company and we should always be kept in pairs or more.We have several pairs of brothers and sisters here at Piggyfriends but today we received some photos from our Pigpenpals in Connecticut so we thought that we would share one with you.

Above you can see Mama Rin with her daughters, Nico and Maki. There are more photos of this family that we will show you in future A-Z posts and we are promised a video too.

We are sorry that we have been remiss in posting since we did the Taste Tests but Slave has been sick and Niamh has needed a lot of attention with an abscess ( clearing up now - all paws crossed ) and we could not reach the drawer in Slave's desk where her camera lives.

If you have any photos of your piggies with their friends or family, we would love to see them. Use the Contribute tab at the top of our page and use the title A Piggy A-Z etc. the same as we have typed at the top of this post.

Friday video: Syringe feeding and Cookie update

Wanted to show you how Cookie grabs the syringe, but when I filmed it she didn't want to do that. She seems to be doing okay, the wound looks good. We would only want her to eat a bit more, that is why we force feed her a bit of soaked pellets. When I am not filming she grabs the syringe herself. #guineapig #postop btw, isn't she adorable?

A post shared by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Sep 16, 2017 at 1:23am PDT

Yesterday we heard from our vet about the culture that was made from Cookie's lumps. She had a staphylococcus, we have her the right anti biotic to battle that, which means it should no longer be present after a full week of antibiotics! Cookie has joined her cage mates Binky and Raani again, there was a lot of rumbling...
We still syringe feed Cookie because she seems to not eat enough on her own. The vet thinks the painkiller and antibiotic have upset her tummy. We were allowed to stop that now, so hopefully her appetite will improve! She still gets a probiotic and loads of TLC (doctor's order). P.s. sorry for us not being that active on the blog lately. One of us just got married, and the other two are busy syringe feeding piggies with (former) abcesses.

The last of the taste tests.

We have come to the last of the taste test " treats". This one is called "Fruit Garden" and it contains Apple, Banana and Rosehip. Now we did not expect this to go down too well as none of us like banana. Slave can only remember five Piggyfriends ever liking banana in the very many years that she has been taking in piggies.

Tyrion filled the dish ready for us to try. Here is a photo of it. The dark bits that you can see must be dried rosehips. We are not sure why they are there but fresh rosehips do contain vitamin C, which we get from the many fresh veggies that we eat.

Unsurprisingly Carter dived into the bowl. He chucked out all the banana and tried a few apple pieces.

Saoirse joined him, sniffed at the dish and left.

The Dangermice were undecided about this. Cosmo nibbled a little bit of the apple.....

......but Casper retreated into his pig cave and would have nothing to do with it.

This is as close as Fernando would get to the dish and Martin ran away.

" No thank you." says Otto as Slave tried to tempt him with some of the dried apple.

As no pig was enjoying this box of treats, Slave took pity on us and went and picked some apples from the garden. Here is Louis munching a piece of real fresh apple. "Yum yum".

We all want to thank Nature's Feast for sending us all this food to try out and we are sorry that we did not like the Treats but the bag of food was good. We think that the treat boxes may be more suited to hamsters. We are going to email Nature's Feast and tell them about our test in case they are not reading our blog.

Tyrion, Ivan and Magnus all say " This is the food that we love the best. GRASS!"

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.