Slave took some pigtures at the weekend of those of us who had grown since the last photoshoot. She said that these were the last days of summer and she wanted to take outdoor pigtures so that our eyes did not look red with the camera flash.
Silly Slave. Elliot has red eyes anyway.
She used pieces of apple and cucumber to bribe the subjects to sit still on a garden chair and had her son nearby in case any of us made a bid for freedom.
Here is my best friend Elliot with his apple. He cleared it up as soon as the pigtures had been taken.
We have a friend on twitter it's the biggest rodent we know!
He is a capybara, and he agreed to answer some of our questions.
So what do you want to know about Capabara's?
Post your questions here, we will ask him on twitter, so please make you messages no longer than 140 characters... So we can easily tweet your questions to him.
You can follow him on twitter, read his website Giant Hamster
and there even is a Capybara soft cuddly toy and a book for sale!
He's also onFacebook as Caplin Rous and his FB fan page is Caplin Rous, the World's Most Famous Capybara!
The pigture above is Caplin Rous (=rodent of unusual size) relaxing,
see how he puts his paws in front of himself too!
so it's not just a guinea pig thing, maybe all rodents do it?
Report by @guinygirlz : Lily'explorer, lil'wheeker, lil'woop (compared to Caplin!) and Agent Valentino
Agent Silver Streak reporting on a Guinea Pig Health Issue.
If you look at my pigture, you will see that the lower part of my eyelid looks strange. This is a condition called Fatty Eye and I believe that in the US they call it Pea Eye as well. It is not caused by me being a fat piggy as I am one of the smallest of the boars at Piggyfriends. I run around a lot and am definitely not fat.
It is just a bulge in the lower eye muscle and is nothing for Slaves to worry themselves about. It doesn't bother me one bit but our Rodentologists have said that surgery is possible if it affects the vision.
I have read that this may be hereditary but my mother and siblings do not have it so that may not be true.
For those of you waiting to find out Agent Silver Streak is also known as Dorian Piggyfriend
It's time for another veggie, this is not our favorite but it's okay, Here our slave buys the variant that has slender carrots and with the green tops still on. Some supermarkets have a trashcan next tot the carrots so you can throw away the tops before you leave the store! Why would you do that? All these lovely lush green tops, what a waste! Here you see us enjoying some carrot tops, Yum!
Btw, we even read on a website (see below) that you humans can eat the carrot tops, Well don't get any ideas (the website has recipes) and just keep those tops coming towards us!
Here's a pigture of our Daisy eating a carrot, She shows the version where you keep your (little) paw on top of the carrot for eating comfort, and it helps to keep your carrot safe from veggie snatchers... The nutritional value of the carrot according to guinealynx is:
Guinea Lynx' VEGETABLE CHART 100 gram Percent Energy Protein Ascorbic Calcium Phosph. Ca:P portions Water (Kcal) (g) Acid(C) (mg) (mg) Ratio Carrots, Baby 89.81 38 0.84 8.4 23 38 0.6:1 Carrots 87.79 43 1.03 9.3 27 44 0.6:1 Source Also we must mention Carrots are pretty high in sugar, It's okay for healthy piggies we guess, but if you have diabetes as a piggy, this veggie should be avoided.... Did you know England has an actual Carrot museum!! It says on their website that the Dutch have bred the carrot to become orange "A tale, probably apocryphal, has it that the orange carrot was bred in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century to honour William of Orange." More on their website: http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/
Well, Do show or tell us what kind of carrots you eat!
Hi there. Came across your website today and thought I'd contribute this. Don't know if you're still up and running but thought it worth trying.
We've had 3 cases of bloat in guineas so far and have treated 2 successfully after losing the first pig due to our personal and our vets' ignorance. My first piece of advice is to always treat withboth antibiotics and a fungle treatment when confronted with bloat, as it is practically impossible to tell which kind of bacteria is causing it without some intrusivce and dangerous testing. We always use Ceptrin, and Nystatin together. Ceptrin twice a day at 0.6 ml per kilo of weight and Nystatin once a day at 1 ml per kilo of weight. The Nystatin apparently has no side effects as many other fungle infection treatments do so it is a good option. Ceptrin is also much better than Baytril for treating for bloat. I personally don't rate Baytril very highly at all for dealing with any piggy complaints.
I aggree that giving Infacol is a great idea, I personally would give 1 ml roughly 3 times a day, to ensure it does it's job well. Keeping them moving is good too. I've never heard of giving olive oil before but am intending to try it out in our latest case of bloat. Also, Buscopan is a good pain killer and helps immensely. The recommended dose I've found online is 1 tablet crushed in about 2 ml of water an syringed to piggy. I also give Metacam too, roughly 0.2 ml per kilo, but you don't want to overload an already struggling system with too much new medication.
Also, my main discovery has been the giving of Lactobacillus, one capsule opened up and put in to about 15 ml of water, and then about half of this or more if piggy will take it, given once a day helped immensely with our pigs. I get this from health shops, try to get the dairy free varietty. This bacteria is not usually present in the gut but seems immensely useful in times of crisis. It can be found in Avipro, the probiotic also, but never seems to help in the same way in that form, for some reason.
I also recommend not feeding green veggies or fruit when trying to get rid of bloat, it can't help. Just hay and critical care, and leaving some of their regular nuggits around should be enough. Orange seems palitable though and in it's case the vitamin C and natural sugar can give a much needed boost. Personally I wouldn't let my guineas graze on grass when they have bloat, but that's personal choice. I would always recommend a good grass hay like meadow hay, rather than something Alfalfa based or anything like Timathy hay because this may be a bit too rich in ill piggy's systems.
Hope this contribution will be of some use to you. Feel free to change lay out or whatever, I realise this is a bit slapdash. Also, piggy owners out there stick up to your vets! Present them with the success of others who have treated bloat and insist they use the correct drugs and the correct doses. I've been walked all over by vets in the past and lost so many dear pigs, but it won't happen again! Their the vet, but your the poor sole who has to sit and watch and feel useless if piggy gets worse and you don't know what to do. Never be left feeling that if only you'd stood up for your piggy they might have given this or that, and because they didn't you're now blaiming yourself! It's not worth the heartache for you or piggy! Be strong piggy owners everywhere! And vets, please get your acts together! We are only interested in our pets' health and well being, not in having a row and hurting feelings!
If possible, would you mind sending me a brief message to let me know whether or not this information has been of any use to you and your informative site?
As we have been talking about Chicory ( yum yum ) I thought that you might like to see what it looks like when it is growing so here is a picture of a plant in Slave's garden. This is how it looks before it is blanched to make the chicons that we know and love.
The leaves have to be cut off later in the year and the plant put somewhere dark and warm so that the chicons can grow.
Slave took us outside today to mow the lawn and there was a photo opportunity as the sun was shining..
Here is a pigture of our friend Peony demonstrating the art of eating chicory. She is not an agent but Slave thought that this was a good pigture for me to submit. Usually the chicons are broken into pieces but today she used whole ones to bribe us to keep still for the photos. It worked.
