Happy New Year!

Panda wants to spend the last day of 2012 as a wallet. Silly pig.

Woo! More food! But it's really hard to eat a lot of noms with all these fireworks going crazy. Good thing we live indoors.

Any resolutions? Not sure.. Probably still continue working on that website we mentioned in last year's New Year's resolution post. May be we could also be more active with the "pet" and guinea community (rescues, fairs...), and of course post more often. No.


Reflecting on our 2012... We could say it was so-so. We had bad times, we had good times, we lost a fellow piggy, we took in a new fellow piggy, and we gained a lot of weight (as usual). Our greatest achievement this year would probably be surviving the Mayan apocalypse. Go guinea pigs!

Good or bad , we only live on an average of 5-8 years, best to not complain and just go. Be more thankful. Eat your veggies. Spoil your pigs. Hope you all have a nice New Year, stay safe, keep all your humans in the house as fireworks might spook them. Happy New Year!

Book Reiew: Training Your Guinea Pig

Our Human found this book months ago, it's about the basics of guinea pig training *giggles*.

Click to zoom in.

We haven't really tried any of the techniques taught here, but they do sound possible to do. Not much information about the authors. We've read the whole book, and the problem with guinea pig books is that most of them aren't updated, and this one was, lets say, 80% updated.

We like how it included C&C cages, the importance of having at least two guinea pigs, and hay 24/7. The parts we didn't like so much was the "female and male guinea pigs never fight" statement, and the idea of walking us on a leash.

NO.

Guinea leashes or harnesses aren't cool, it can cause a lot of damage and stress. To start off, our skeletal structure isn't suitable for it, unlike cats and dogs, it's not flexible or wide enough to make a jacket fit. As prey animals, we like to be cautious of out surroundings, hence bringing us to the outside world with open spaces, strange noise, and even stranger humans, can stir up a lot of trouble. Not to mention we have a strange thing wrapped around our chest and a mysterious force pulling us in every direction. There are too many wrong scenarios that could happen with a harness, plus we hate it. If you want us to experience the great outdoors, we would be happier sitting on fresh grass, in an enclosed pen, with human supervision.

This is a very nice book with really cute pictures in it, and great training ideas. We love how it encourages piggy-human interaction, hopefully a revised version would come up without the leash chapter and with more updated information.

Want to teach your piggies tricks? We found this very nice site, it offers guinea pig training techniques for free, with videos. It's called Guinea Pig Agility.com

Green Leaf Lettuce and Japanese Cucumber

And...We're back! from our hectic study season, I swear Human's schedule was so bad... But fear no more, we little piggies have fixed the problem by providing a better human schedule.

Feed us! Feed us!

Today, we shall share an awesome break through. After a tropical storm murdered most of our noms, veggie prices have gone up, some went out of stock fast. So back then we only had a few options; iceberg and those ready to eat kind in neatly packaged plastic bags. Iceberg is a huge no-no since it contains no nutrients and has very high water content, it's a really bad case of diarrhea waiting to happen. The ready to eat kind (heart of romaine variety) is alright, but if you've noticed, the contents has more stemmy white parts than it has of the green leafy parts. In other words, it's almost comparable to iceberg, and have you seen the price of those things? Not. Worth. It.

While human was desperately searching for piggy veggies, she noticed how there are two different looking veggies that are both labeled "iceberg". One was round and cabbage-like, while the other looks all ruffly like the one in the picture. From what we know, icebergs are described as being round, so what is this other lettuce supposed to be? Our human bought the ruffle veggie and did tiny research to find what it's called, turns out it's called "green leaf lettuce", very safe for us piggies to eat. In fact it's way better than romaine since romaine, as others have observed, gives us cloudy urine, a sign of calcium deposits. Why was it labeled as "iceberg"? We don't know.

Deliiiiicious

Now, at a more desperate time during the storm, our home was surrounded in water, and we were slowly running out of fresh food. No lettuce, no bell peppers, no nothing, it was like the dark ages of our piggy lives. Since we didn't want to completely go hungry, we sent Human, our loyal human, on a quest! It didn't take her too long before she came back with this odd looking cucumber. She found it in a Korean store near by, fortunately for us, Koreans love their veggies! We first thought that this was some kind of special cucumber from Korea, but actually it's called "Japanese cucumber"! A type of cucumber smaller than the usual ones we eat (American cucumber). It's very skinny but the length is almost like the Amercan variety. We love it! It's very green, crunchy, it can comes in seedless form, and since it's so small the water content isn't as high as the American cucumber (but still feed in moderation). Cucumbers might look simple but they are very much packed with vitamins, and most of their vitamin C is hidden in the cucumber's skin, hence this makes an excellent addition to the piggy menu. Go Japanese Cucumber! We love you! Wheek!

Lets end the post with tiny piggy feet!

Dri Fit Fabric Instead of Fleece As Bedding

We got a very helpful tip from our fellow Piggy friend Mr. Potato, about using dri fit fabric instead of fleece since we live in a more humid climate compared to the piggies who first thought about using fleece. As much as we wanted to switch to dri fit, it's really hard to find. Mr. Potato found some at a fabric store near Shangri-La Makati, which was on sale (it was cheaper than fleece!). Too bad we didn't have time to go buy some. Not sure if it's still on sale or at least in stock, hope it is...

Dri fit fabric is the same stuff humans use for their sports attire; marathon singlets, basketball jerseys and shorts, soccer uniforms and almost everything related to all that. Dri fit fabric is designed to be light weight, breathable, and of course, dry. It's really great for our tropical climate, and it works just like fleece! Wash in detergent first before using to get the wicking effect. What's more amazing is that it dries faster than fleece, no more waiting over night to use the bedding again! Also great for those who hand wash their fleece, dri fit is very light! A feather compared to fleece.

Since we never get to buy our own batch of dri fit bedding, we did a trial thing using Human's singlet (shh... Don't tell her. No, actually go ahead, we don't really care). It wasn't wicking before, so we washed it with detergent, then voila! It's very soft and absorbent, we love it.

We tried purchasing the fabric online, but we keep finding companies that sold in whole sale (as in they sell them per ton), or probably we're looking at the wrong places. We're still very interested in purchasing some of these magical fabrics.

Pure Timothy Pellets

If you guys remember, we mentioned before about Princess Club Corp. selling pure timothy pellets. We had no idea what the ingredients were until we asked, and they replied to us that it's pure timothy in pellet form. So we looked it up to see if there are any information about feeding us pure grass pellets, even if it's originally meant for horses and boom! We stumbled upon this brand with the exact same information about the pure timothy pellets. What we found was this.

It all sounds nice, but one thing that makes us wonder; is it okay for us to consume it for the rest of our life? We piggies need more than just hay. Vitamin C wouldn't be a problem if we get it from our veggies everyday, syringe feeding us ascorbic acid be great too (just take it slow when starting). But what about our other vitamins? We have no idea what's really essential for us, so we compare analysis' from Hagen, Standlee, and the famous Oxbow, and KMS:

Standlee Timothy Pellets

Protein - Not Less Than 8%
Crude Fiber - Not More Than 35%Moisture - Not More Than 12% 

Crude Fat - Not Less Than 1.8% 

KMS Timothy Pellets

Crude Protein - (min)   14.00 %    
Crude Fat - (min)   2.5 %    
Crude Fiber - (min)   20.00 %    
Crude Fiber - (max)   25.00 %    
Vitamin A - (IU/KG)   30,000    
Vitamin D-3 - (ICU/KG)   1,000    
Vitamin C - (mg/kg)   1,000    
Calcium - (min)   0.7    
Phosphorus - (min)   0.4

Oxbow Cavy Cuisine

Crude Protein - min 14.00% 

Crude Fat - min 1.50% 
Crude Fiber - min 25.00% 
Crude Fiber - max 28.00% 
Calcium - min 0.35% 
Calcium - max 0.85% 
Phosphorus - min 0.25% 
Salt - min 0.50% 
Salt - max 1.00% 
Vitamin A, IU/lb min 13,000 
Vitamin C, mg/lb min 200

Hagen Guinea Pig Pellets

Protein - 18%

Oils and Fats - 2.5%

Fibre - 13%

Moisture - 12%

and so on..

So what does this tell us? We don't know, but we're sure that we need lots of fiber. Vitamins are also important stuff. We've noticed that out of the four pellets, the horse pellets have more fiber and less fats. Seems legit.

The timothy pellets sounds like they're worth a try! The only reasons why it's not recommended to feed piggies food meant for other animals is because of the nutritional needs. Sometimes feeds have toxic medicines in them, like some rabbit pellets, those could contain antibiotics which could be toxic to us. Pellets aren't even that important, it should be treated more of like a supplement while everything else needed is balanced out with veggies, or even better, fresh grass.

Unless we're completely convinced, why not? It's pure grass hay. All we have to do is balance all the vitamins we usually get in pellets with veggies. Plus the sun, we piggies need our vitamin D! So there, if only we're really convinced, we shall soon have these babies in our little piggy paws... I mean mouth.

Vitakraft Meadow Hay Review!

We didn't expect to get two new piggy products on the same day; we knew about the Carefresh, but the hay caught us by surprise. Feels just like Christmas... So we got this hay from Princess Club Corp., same people who sold us long stalked timothy hay. We received a text message about PCC having meadow/natural hay from Belgium, at first we thought it was the Versele-Laga type, turns out we have Vitakraft.

Knowing Vitakraft's product line filled with not so good guinea food and treats, we had low expectations when we saw the brand name "Vitakraft" on our bag of hay. Vitakraft sells a lot of hay varieties, the one we have is meadow hay, we have a feeling that it's hay possibly from the meadows. In the packaging it says that Vitakraft hay is taken from the Alpine mountains, sounds delicious. 

  

Surprisingly, it's not that bad compared to all the other hays we've had, this is by far the best. It's very stringy, soft, and more green compared to natural hay, which was getting dustier, more yellow, and became harder every time we purchased a new pack. Our PCC timothy hay smelled the strongest, it was really hard and stalky, and talk about dusty. We're not sure if dusty is the right word, but the leaves were falling off, crumbling, and it eventually turned into powder. Vitakraft hay smells like rasins, and it's really not that strong or dusty like, we had to bury our face in it to figure out what to compare the smell with. If we can recall, Natural Hay smelled musky, and our PCC hay didn't smell bad but it was just really strong, like dried strawberries right in your face.

It's also cheap, P250 per pack, each pack weighs 1kg. It's very light (if you're human), but we feel like our hay is going to last us for... a month. Two months since we bought two. No, we have a feeling it's going to last us probably more than that. We're too lazy to compute on what's more economical to buy. We're guessing that if you want more hay for less, go with Versele-Laga, but if you want a tiny bit more quality, go with Vitakraft. Versele-Laga isn't really low quality hay, we remember loving that stuff! The ones we've previously bought must be an old stock that's been sitting in the pet store for months, or even years. It all depends... Personally, we like buying or trying out different brands as long as they're piggy safe, it makes life fun.

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Timothy pellets!

We keep getting text messages from PCC about their new items for sale. Not that we're complaining. PCC's selling timothy pellets for P150 per 500 grams. Minimum order is five packs, but if you're interested in buying less than that, you could go buy it at their place, where? We don't know. Go ask. They're in Facebook and Sulit.

The pellets are from USA, the brand is called ASI Pellet, Ripon USA. We looked it up and we can't find enough information about it. All we know is that it's marketed for horses. Unless we know about the ingredients, we're staying skeptical. We know that it doesn't have vitamin C, but that could easily be supplemented by Lemon Cee, fresh grass, and veggies. We're just worried about the added vitamins and probably anti-biotics or whatevers mixed in it. Anyone willing to try it out, please do share info about it! Wheek.

Carefresh Review!

It's finally here! And it's smaller than we thought, we imagined it would be the same size as our Natural Hay package thing. So here it is.. Carefresh. So exciting. Let the review begin!


Carefresh is a brand known for its pet/environmentally safe and high quality pet bedding. Other than bedding they also produce small animal feeds. Carefresh is owned by Absorption Corp., a company dedicated in manufacturing products for the small pet industry. Although Carefresh is what they're popularly known for, the company also owns other brands such as Arm & Hammer and Biofresh (probably the new name for Carefresh, but more commercialized for lab animals).

There are different kinds of Carefresh beddings; natural, ultra, confetti, colors, and basic blend. What we have here is natural Carefresh, made from cellulose fiber, also known as natural fiber, any kind of material based on plants. For Carefresh, their natural fiber comes from wood pulp. Ultra is the same as natural except it's bleached, some consumers have reported that Ultra is the best among the other Carefresh products, it's made out of the same thing but Ultra is somehow softer. Colors is the same as ultra except it's colored. Confetti is a mixture of natural and colors. Basic blend is a mixture of natural and wood shavings. There are more types being made, with different mixtures, textures, and materials.

We bought our Carefresh Natural from Herpaholic (Pets Supply Depot, you can go find them on Facebook) for P500. The texture is very nice and soft much like cardboard. The smell... If you've ever lived in a box, especially in a balikbayan box, or at least stuck your whole head in one, that's exactly how Carefresh natural smells like. Wood pulp must be a fancy word for cardboard. A lot of humans have been praising this Carefresh natural, but there is also an equal amount of humans who dislike the product. Some claim that it's too dusty, it caused their master piggy, master chinchilla, master snake and the likes respiratory problems, and intestinal blockage due to bedding consumption. It even states in the package to feed snakes away from the bedding to prevent digestion problems. We do agree with those who don't like the bedding; the best part about the bedding is that it's soft, the cardboard smell isn't as strong as wood shavings but it's still irritating to the nose. Dustiness isn't that obvious but you can still sense that there is dust through the nose irritation we just mentioned. Mochi isn't a fan of it.

If we had to chose between our homemade bedding and Carefresh... Homemade FTW! Because of the smell, dust, and price. The only nice thing about Carefresh is the softness, but I bet my piggy butt that we can also make our homemade Carefresh just as soft. Watch out!

Cage v 6!

-We apologize for the lack of pictures due to technical problems, we will soon have this fixed-

We finally relocated to our original spot, the one we used to stay in during pre-Jónsi era. We now have a 2x4 which is currently divided into two to share space with Adler, we couldn't make it two storied because we ran out of connectors. It's very annoying how there are so many grids and few connectors, if only they sold these separately then we wouldn't have to buy another set.

All this moving... is making me.. Zzz...

So far so good, now our home is bigger/wider, more room for our piggy manliness, and soon (hopefully), a room mate for Adler.

So we've been doing background checks on Adler's breed
and we never knew satin guinea pigs are prone to
sever health problems!

O hai!

Me and Loki in a plastic jar. Wheek!

My name is Panda, I'm an American short haired guinea pig. As I type this, I am currently four months old and happily living with Loki, my cage mate. Loki is like a brother to me, and like most siblings we tend to have our disagreements. Thankfully, our pet human built us a cage big enough for us to get away from each other when we feel like it. Don't worry, like most siblings, we always forgive each other by the end of the day.

Me and Loki, decided to make a tiny blog about our life as guinea pigs. With help from our pet human, we have successfully made our first post. Tadaah!