Beauty Pig

The guinea girls were really cute tonight; all running about and wheeping! They are quite brave these days, running around the whole room even venturing a foot or four into the kitchen.

Cuddle time with Maya was the best: isn't she gorgeous?!?

Success!!!

The guinea girl finally started using the cup bed I bought them as belated Christmas present!!! Apart from that not much new apart from that this is the second night in a row that they have bullied me into going outside into the freezing cold to cut grass for them!

Lazy Pigs

It's been a lazy day in guinea land!

Molly has been doing the carrot thing again, i.e. chewing off and spitting out the outer layer until she gets down to the sweet core! Sweet tooth or what?!?

Christmas Presents

Went to Pets at Home today so the guinea girls got some belated Christmas presents:
- a ball made of hay/straw which got a wee bit of interest
- a new bed which they have so far almost completely ignored
- some seasonal herbs which they love
- and a brown paper bag which really fascinated Maya
Also yesterday they received some straw carrots from my brother-in-law and Chloe showed some mild interest.

So here's the Top Gear Top Tip: if you have guinea pigs, don't spend any money on toys in a pet shop. Just give them a brown paper bag and tons of food and they will be happy piggies!

Well Christmas has been and gone. Hope you all had a good one. The guinea girls weren't too impressed with Christmas: they did not get any more food than any other day when I'm not working. During the week they are on pretty much the same amount of food each day, but when I am off they bully me into feeding more... So whenever it's diet time, I make sure that I am not at home. Also, the guinea girls are now famous! Hubby organised a surprise calendar for 2008 with each month another photo of the girls! Isn't that just the best present ever?

Nice Sunday

The 5 guinea girls had quite a good Sunday. They got cleaned out, bullied me into feeding them 3 times rather than the normal twice and did not have to go out to do any Christmas shopping at all. It's rather nice to have a guinea pig life!!!!

A Pig's Life

This has been their first week without spinach. It's hard not being able to feed them quite as much as I would like. To compensate for the spinach, I have been feeding them two different kinds of pellets. They certainly have been enjoying this, but I think they are constantly wondering when the spinach will be back. Poor things. It's such a hard life without fresh grass, corn on the cob and spinach! I really feel for them, I mean all they do is sleep, eat, have a few walks about, destroy some carton boxes, sleep some more, eat some more, enjoy the halogen heater and wheep every time I open the fridge door. Poor wee guineas!

Not much happening in Guinea Land tonight... The girls are still enjoying the halogen heater very much! They seem to be up and about a lot more when it's switched on.

Here a picture of Twinkle enjoying the hut (before they ate most of the roof).

Wednesday Clean Out

I now have 5 nice smelling girls again after their Wednesday clean out. The outside tap is frozen, so it's a bit harder to clean the cage, but we got there in the end. Also I've put the electric halogen heater in the dining room. Whenever I switch it on, all 5 guineas get up and start eating. I'm convinced I caught Keleigh sun bathing tonight.

Christmas Spirit

We stopped on the way home tonight for some Romaine lettuce and so all his happy on the guinea pig front today. And to top it off they got some pears which is definitively one of their favourites.... I wish you could have seen Molly grabbing a piece and jumping, almost flying, into the cage. It always amazes me how agile my fat wee Mollykins is!

Aren't we pigs grumpy today!

I have decided to not feed them any spinach anymore so went shopping for Romaine lettuce which I didn't get. I bought some round lettuce, but they completely ignored it. They ate a little iceberg, but didn't like it much either... So Chloe has given me the evil eye all evening! Oh well, tomorrow's another day, so hopefully I will have happier little pigs then!


Speaking about food, did you know that guinea pigs produce two kinds of poos? One is just the normal stuff you would expect. The other one, called caecotrophes, is rich in various vitamins and is part of their nutrition. They produce around 150 of these a day - so why do they want spinach and Romaine lettuce again?

Piggy Wash

That's them all washed and put to bed... Well nearly all: Chloe seemed to be wheezing a bit so she was allowed to skip her bath. The rest smell gorgeous now and have the nicest shiniest coat (thanks to the new shampoo I tried today). Here's a picture of Maya after her bath and before blow-drying her hair.

Pigs enjoying their clean cage

I decided to start this diary as my 5 gorgeous girls are a big part of our life and they add so much fun, love (and work!) to our home.

Like every Sunday, I cleaned them out first thing this morning... and while I complained non stop about how messy they are (not that they'd care about what I think) I could not imagine another start to my Sundays. It's such good fun to see them running about and exploring their cage once cleaned, as if they'd never seen it before. So that's them all clean and happy...