Thanksgiving Pigtures

The following pigtures of Apollo (brown piggy), Dmitri (mostly black piggy), and Dante Wigglebottom (white and black piggy) were taken for the Thanksgiving holiday back in November. Apollo has since passed on, but you can tell he was quite the ham in photo shoots!

The Piggyfriends' grass is frozen!

Slave cuts fresh grass for us every day but this morning she came back in and said that it had frozen!

"She offered us these cauliflower leaves instead. Much as we love a cauli leaf it is not the same as a pile of fresh grass but I suppose it will have to do" says Saoirse Piggyfriend in between mouthfuls.

Carter grabs a piece of leaf and rushes to eat it in the privacy of a box before his friends can steal it. "I love cauli," says Carter, " and I am so glad that our friend, Roly, grows lots of it on his farm."

"Well, I suppose there is nothing for it but to join my friends, " says Aoife, " before they have cleared up the lot."

"Don't worry piggies, " says Slave. " I have a whole bagful of leaves for you and maybe the grass will have thawed tomorrow."

Happy Birthday Louis Piggyfriend!

Hello Readers! Louis Piggyfriend here. It is my 6th. birthday today and Slave has given me my very favourite veggie. Sow thistle.

Do you like sow thistle? Slave grows it for us in her veggie garden but it finishes when the warm weather comes to an end. She kept this one growing under a cloche just for my birthday. Wasn't that kind of her?

It is so lovely and juicy that it deserves another photo.

After all that good food, I needed a nap.

"Happy Birthday Louis!" say the Piggyfriend herd.

Friday video: how to train your guinea pig

To do a spin! Hope you are not getting fed up with all our spinning piggies videos. We are now trying to teach our boar Binky to spin as well. In this video we show you how to do it.

How to train your Guinea pig: Do a spin. Raani knows how to spin, and demonstrates that first, though Binky is standing in the way a bit. Then we show how Binky will follow the veg. This is how you teach them to spin, at some point it will click and just saying 'Do a spin' will make your piggy do a spin. #guineapigs #training #doaspin #spin #trick

A post shared by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Nov 29, 2017 at 1:04pm PST

At first we thought Binky would not follow the vegetable at all. Raani and Cookie both spin clockwise. Binky would not do that. Then Piggy dad tried to make him follow the vegetable anti clockwise, as you can see in the video Binky can do that pretty well. Now I wonder does he not see the veg well when we try to make him spin clockwise, or does he just like to turn anti clockwise?

A Piggy A - Z. F for Fernando

A few of the Piggyfriends are not keen on having their photos taken. I am one of them. Slave tried to creep up on me and catch me unawares but I saw her coming and ran to hide in our wooden house. So she took our house and tunnel away.

Having nowhere to hide, I ran into the corner of our pen and sat with my brother, Martin, so you can see me, Fernando, on the right of this photo.

Here we are again so that you can see my other side. You saw me in the photos when we did the Taste Tests but I was more interested in investigating the new foods that day than watching sneaky photographers.

Friday video: more spinning...

Pig dad is trying to teach us the spin synchronized, he hasn't had much luck with us, though he does claim we can do it synchronized of camera...

Okay, still working on that synchronized spinning... #guineapigs #trick #spin #doaspin

A post shared by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Nov 15, 2017 at 12:44pm PST

Have a great wheekend!
Spinners Raani and Cookie
And boar Binky

I had to go to the vet.

Niamh Piggyfriend here. A while ago I was not eating very well and Slave could see that my incisors were growing diagonally. A sure sign that there was a problem with my molars. She took me to see our Rodentologist, Lynn from Palace Piggies, and she trimmed my teeth but said that she thought that I might have a tooth root abscess. Eeek!!! Our retired Rodentologist was an expert with abscesses and could have dealt with this himself but Lynn said that I should go and see our vet.

While she waited for the abscess to appear, Slave had to syringe feed me. I was very good and did not mind this but eventually the day came when the trip to the vet was necessary.

I had to have an Xray. Our vet put sandbags all around me so that I would not move and spoil the image.You can see it above. It is not a very clear picture but it is the best of several that Slave took. Our vet said that it shows that I have Osteomyelitis, which causes my teeth to grow wrongly into my jaw and this could have caused the abscess, which is visible in the full size Xray but not in this little photo. This does not look much like me does it? Where is my coat?

This is what I really look like. Here I am being weighed. I only just fit on the vet's little scale but the only other one that he has is for dogs and cats and does not register very well with a little guinea on it. I do not think that any of our big boars would fit on this little one.



The vet lanced my abscess and drained a lot of horrible pus out of it. Then he flushed out the cavity with antiseptic and saline. There is no photo of this event as Slave was holding me still whilst the vet performed the procedure. You would not want to see it anyway as it was nasty and smelly. I made a lot of noise about it but then I started making a noise before he put the scalpel in. The people in the waiting room could hear me.
 

We came home with Marbocyl antibiotics, a bag of saline and a lot of syringes. Slave had to flush out the abscess with the saline every day using the little hole that the vet had made and every week we went back to the vet for him to do it better. I started eating once the abscess had been lanced and Slave was very relieved about that. So was I.

After the abscess had gone flat, I thought that I was OK but then another one came up and we had to go back to the vet and start over. Here you can see our lovely vet examining me. His name is Etienne and he comes from Belgium. He has been the Piggyfriends' vet for nearly 20 years.

Finally the day came when Etienne said that I was all mended! Hooray! There is a possibility that I might get another one so paws crossed that this does not happen. I like going to see the vet but do not want another abscess.