Piggy Pic of the Day: Waiting to go play

Morry, Sharky, and Coppy waiting for the slaves to find their houses so they can go play outside in the grass. Whee think they look rather impatient...

Meet the Piggies: Poof

Name: Poof (because she is like a poofball with her fur sticking out in all directions, and because she likes to vanish underneath the fleece in her cage)
Age: estimated 1 year, 2 months
Weight: 1006 grams/ 2lbs, 3.5 oz
Description: tricolored Abyssinian with patches of white, cream, and lemon agouti
Favorite foods: grass, dandelion greens, corn husks, corn silks, fresh hay
Favorite activities: chowing on grass, diving in and out of tubs of hay, having her chin petted, bossing around the younger pigs

Lounging about after a meal

Story: Poof moved in with us and the slaves in October 2010. Currently the newest addition to our Collective, the first thing she did was tell us how spoiled we were. As a baby cavy, she had been abandoned in a box on the side of a freeway, then subsequently spent several months living in a rescue alongside some bunnies and a chinchilla. She didn't mind the bunnies, but you should hear her on the subject of chinchillas... the first time she went to the vet for a checkup, her ears were so full of chinchilla dust, the q-tip swab came out pitch black! Our slaves sometimes cut up empty cardboard boxes for her because her favorite toy is a tub filled with fresh hay. As soon as they put it down she immediately leaps in and begins rustling around finding choice pieces to gobble up. Sometimes she gets territorial and won't allow any of us in with her though, so whee have to wait until she has finished to have our turns. It is difficult because whee are very impatient, but thankfully the slaves give us plenty to go around!

Enjoying some hammock time while Peaches is preoccupied

Meet the Piggies: Peaches

Name: Peaches
Age: 10 months old
Weight: 1066 grams/ 2lbs, 5.6oz
Description: blonde and white Dutch with four white socks
Favorite foods: grass, wheatgrass, romaine lettuce... loves practically EVERYTHING
Favorite activities: inhaling grass outside, eating like a madpig, lounging in the soft comfy hammock, competing for food, squealing for food

Peaches favorite activity (eating) and favorite food (romaine lettuce)

Story: Peaches came to live with the slaves in September 2010. Our human slaves quickly discovered her favorite pastime - eating! Peaches can often be found still chowing away upstairs long after the rest of us have finished eating our fill and retreated back into our hideaways to sleep. Out of the younger cavies, Peaches is the most friendly and sociable to the slaves. We theorize this is because she knows that the nicer she is to them, the more likely they are to pet her and spoil her with treats! When she is not eating, she can typically be found engaging in her other favorite activity, snoozing in the hammock. This does get frustrating for us sometimes.. after all, only one pig can fit in there at a time, and since she has a tendency to hog it for hours, the rest of us rarely ever get a turn! Our slaves named her Peaches because she was tan and white colored, like peaches and cream.

Resting in her favorite toy - the hammock!

Wildwood Welcomes Baby Capybaras

These two adorable Capybara babies are the newest editions to our Wildwood family who arrived on March 4, 2011. 


Some of our visitors think Capybaras look like large, hairy pigs! Capybaras are the largest rodents in the world whose diet consists mainly of grass and aquatic plants.


Capybaras can run very fast and are excellent swimmers; you can see their webbed feet in the photograph. Did you know Capybaras can dive in the water and have been known to remain underwater for as long as five minutes?


Adult Capybaras can be as long as 4 feet and weigh more than 100 pounds. These little ones have a lot of growing to do before they are that big! They weighed about 2 pounds when they were born and will be full grown by the time they are 18-months old.


Capybaras live in South America which is where they got their name which means "master of the grass." They don't dig burrows like some rodents but they like to make beds in the shallow dirt.


Bibliography:
Internet: http://nationalzoo.si.edu; www.switcherroozoo.com