Piggy Pics of the Day: Piggies Rule

Like Murphy's law, its just another indisputable fact of life that piggies rule! Here whee are posing with the decorative wooden block our humans brought back from the Pignic. As you can see, whee don't always wish to cooperate with the photographer... well, piggy modeling is hard work you know!

Poof somehow managed to get her nose dirty - even though everything around her is clean

Peaches decides to rebel

"Okay we're done for today, I hear a fridge full of veggies calling my name!"

Guinea Pig Care & Health Tip: Weigh me weekly!

Me, Truffle, waiting for my weighing

Hello, Truffle here! Today I will be talking about weight. Many humans don't realize that a piggy's weight is a telling sign of his or her health. In many cases when whee become ill, weight loss and a decreased appetite are some of the first indicators. It is good practice to get in the habit of regularly weighing your piggies, recording their weights, and familiarizing yourself with their average weights and fluctuations.

"Wheek! May I have a treat please?"

According to GuineaLynx, you should weigh your pigs weekly and be alert for any dramatic changes. They recommend keeping a chart which will allow you to track gradual weight loss and if necessary, get medical help early, when many illnesses can be nipped in the bud. If your pig is already ill, GuineaLynx recommends daily weighing. This is because we piggies have been known to go off our food, due to the side effect of antibiotics disrupting our gastrointestinal tract, or because whee are not feeling well. Human sized scales are too large to get an accurate reading for us little piggies, so kitchen scales for measuring food are ideal.

Our scale

Our humans are in the habit of weighing us twice a week. If whee are sick, they weigh us twice a day before giving us our antibiotics to ensure whee are eating sufficiently (if not, we get hand fed and receive Critical Care with round-the-clock close supervision). Each of us gets picked up, plopped in a cardboard box, measured in both grams and pounds, recorded, then returned back to our home. For maximum accuracy, they make sure to zero the scale so the weight of the container doesn't get factored in. Whee all have our own individual health charts. They are currently working on compiling complete medical histories for each of us. We will have them post it up when they are done.

I weigh 1233 grams

...which is 2 lbs, 11.5 ounces!

Staring out the window dreaming of grass and veggies

To read more in depth, follow the links to these GuineaLynx articles on weighing and overall health tips.

Herd Film Strips

Whee heard our humans talking about something called 35mm film, and decided to investigate for ourselves. Nowadays everything is digitalized, but vintage has its charm too... click on the film strips for closeups!

Cinnamon and Caramel

Sharky, Morry and Coppy take turns at the food bowl

...while Truffle, Revy, Poof and Peaches squabble over corn husks!
Truffle takes an unorthodox approach in the last frame.

Belka and Truffle turn one!

Truffle blowing out the candle

Belka and Truffle turn one this month! Of course, nobody knows their actual birthday, but our humans estimated that it is sometime in July. Belka and Truffle are sisters from the same litter. Judging by Truffle's size,  which is a lot smaller than Belka, whee guessed that she is the younger of the two. However, you certainly wouldn't be able to tell by her attitude - although she's the smallest, she makes up for it with her bite. Often, just a glare from her is enough to send the much larger Peaches and Belka running for cover. Or downstairs, whichever is closer. But whee digress.


Anyways, Belka and Truffle got to have their own special piggy party with lots of wheatgrass and the wearing of celebratory headgear! Happy first birthday Belka and Truffle!

Wheeks, from the non-birthday piggies

"Can you tell we're sisters?"

Nom nom nom

Sibling squabbling

"But... but.... it's my birthday too!"

"...but this is a satisfactory consolation prize."

Piggy Pics of the Day: Poker for Parsley

Poof deciding which cards to keep

While our humans were away, whee guinea pigs decided to have a few games of piggy poker using our new deck of piggy playing cards. Instead of poker chips and money, whee played using more important currency - FOOD! Here are a few pigtures of our Poker for Parsley night.

Peaches the dealer prepares the deck - she shuffles by sitting on the cards and  popcorning

Truffle was the Purveyor of Parsley, protecting the loot

Belka puts on her thinking cap

Revy decides to raise

Belka's bluffing face - cute, no?

Poof opts to leave the table while she's ahead

Truffle takes her cut of the winnings

Whee are not sure who really won, but for some reason, whee think it was Truffle...

Guinea Pig Playing Cards!

Peaches strikes a pose next to one of her playing cards

For today, whee are presenting our very own, special, personalized guinea pig playing cards featuring yours truly, the piggies of the Cali Cavy Collective!

How did this come about, you may ask? Well, as the story goes, a few weeks ago our humans were playing cards next to us while whee were going about our lawn mowing duties. Coppy happened to wander by them and took a look at what they were playing with, which was a boring standard deck of cards. So whee decided to personalize our own deck of cards, featuring pictures of our herd. That way, our slaves can think of us whenever they play cards, even if whee are happily sleeping in another room!

Whee were also hoping that when playing, they would see our pigtures and admire our cuteness, which would hopefully have the desired effect of making them want to feed us veggie treats. But that is something for another day. Enlarge the pigtures to see everything up close! Personally, whee think our cards turned out pretty well (although the same cannot necessarily be said for these pigtures, so give us a wheek if you want better closeups!).

One of Morry's kings next to the back of our deck. Can you guess who is featured on the back?

Sharky's aces

King Morry-mor

Queen Coppy

Jacks, featuring the king and queen, truly best friends forever

Poof pokes her head around to see her likenesses 

Revy tries to mimic her modeling poses

An uncharacteristically shy Peaches wonders why she is on all the "Wanted" posters

Belka admires all the pretty peegs

Truffle waits expectantly for a treat

Peaches' Army

A selection of colorful group closeups

Herd lineups

The triumphant trio

Cinnamon and Caramel, our humans first two peegs

Piggy Pics of the Day: Peaches' Army

Peaches' Army readies to conquer

A short comic strip featuring Peaches' piggy army! General Peaches assembled a small unit to conquer a neighboring patch of grass, but couldn't quite manage to keep her overeager troops in line...

Squabbling breaks out amongst the troops

"Settle down now, back in formation!"

"Left paw, right paw, left!"

But Revy breaks rank to claim more of the communal corn husk rations -

A tug-of-war tussle ensues among the troops

General Peaches finally surrenders to insubordination