Guinea Pig Connection

Another Way To Look Out For Small Animals

As the calendar prepares to turn from Adopt A Rabbit Month (February) to Adopt A Rescued Guinea Pig Month (March), and as our friends at Forever Feisty Chinchilla Rescue work to make March 4-10 "Chinchilla Appreciation Week," it bears mentioning that there are other ways we can look out for these three species (and all the others as well).

One big thing that everyone can do is to let their wallet and their shopping patterns do the talking. By this, I mean buying products that are not tested on animals, boycotting products that are, and...if you're so inclined...writing e-mails or letters to manufacturers who still conduct testing on animals and helping pressure them into stopping these testing practices.

Both Caring Consumer and Leaping Bunny offer lists and pocket-sized guides that help you find manufacturers who don't test on animals. (Caring Consumer also provides a list of companies that still do.) Products include cosmetics, health and beauty aids, and household products.   

All companies should take the same attitude as the Urban Decay cosmetics company, which pointedly says on its product packaging and on its Web site:

We DON'T do animal testing. How could anyone?

Touring Exhibit Looks At Pets In America

Okay, so this isn't about guinea pigs...but it is about pets.

There's a nifty virtual exhibit called Pets in America that looks at the role of pets in American households -- and in American society in general -- through photos, memorabilia, early veterinary equipment, vintage pet supply packaging, early accessories, toys, and cages, and much more. One of the photos in the collection is this sweet picture, circa 1900, of an older woman and her pet rabbit.

It was in the 1800s that Americans increasingly brought pets into their homes as companions -- actually, as full-fledged family members. Not only was pet ownership associated with social status and leisure time, says the exhibit, but it was also associated with a happy family life. For those of us involved with small animals, we learn:

By the 1860s, rabbits, white mice, rats, and guinea pigs were considered perfect "children's pets." They were gentle, easy to care for and short-lived. Squirrels were also popular. Captured from the wild, they were sold in pet stores until around 1910. New rodent species have been introduced as pets periodically. In the 1950s, for example, the hamster became the new pet craze.

The virtual exhibit features photo albums, video clips, and audio clips, and a number of activities for kids. Much of the text should be accessible to students in the fifth or sixth grade, but parents can likely find ways to spend some enjoyable time looking at all the photos with younger children.

The exhibit opened at the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina in 2005, and is scheduled to tour through 2008. The National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts, will be hosting the exhibit from April 1 through October 14 of this year.

Guinea Pigs Make The Cover!

If you haven't found it yet, be sure to look for the March issue of Pets Press (just out late last week). In honor of Adopt A Rescued Guinea Pig Month in March (dubbed as such by the ASPCA), you'll find guinea pigs all over the issue.

That's Jester -- one of Cindy's favorite guinea pigs -- on the cover, helping educate readers on how to tell if guinea pigs are right for their home and lifestyle. It's an article that should be required reading for anyone considering bringing a guinea pig home. In another article inside, Buffy (who was just recently adopted!), Sedona (one of our sanctuary pigs), and one of the babies born to a female pulled out of Catskill Game Farm last fall, help describe where rescue pigs come from -- the good, the bad, and the truly deplorable. Look a little further into the issue and you'll find Newton and Skeeter modeling in an ad for us (and doing a fine job of it).

Stay tuned to Pig Notes throughout March as we do our part to recognize Adopt A Rescued Guinea Pig Month!

Mark March 24 On Your Calendars!

On Saturday, March 24, Karen Moulton of Secret Lake Dog Training is sponsoring an Adoption & Education Event at her facility in West Simsbury, Connecticut. The event will be held from noon to 4 p.m.

Karen has lined up a number of New England animal rescues, and dogs, cats, and exotics will all be represented. While rescue animals will be on site, visitors to the event are asked to leave their own pets at home. Karen is organizing the event not only to gain exposure for the rescues in our area, but also to give them a chance to help educate the public about responsible pet ownership. 

You can find Secret Lake Dog Training at:

Farms Village Plaza
244 Farms Village Road
West Simsbury, CT

Karen has posted more information about the event on her Web site.

This is the rescue pigs' first public appearance since early December (it's been too coooooooold to bring them out), so we hope you'll drop in and visit us!

Guinea Pigs & Their Carrots (Part II)

Much as guinea pigs love their carrots, they do sometimes get a bit finicky about them. This finickiness has less to do with boredom than it does with the quality of the carrots coming from a particular bag. With keen senses of smell and taste, they seem to detect something amiss with produce a couple of days before we can.

Regular Carrots. With carrots, you might have a batch that's tasting a bit old, perhaps dry, definitely not sweet. Or, perhaps, they've lost quite a bit of their crispness, still crisp in the thickest part but a bit soft and "bendy" in the thinnest part. In either case, guinea pigs will turn up their noses and wait for you to give them something better.

Rather than let these not-bad-but-not-great carrots go to waste, you can cook them for humans in ways that will let them pick up other flavors: 

• throw them in soup
• oven-roast them with other vegetables in a mixture of barbecue sauce and honey
• cook them on the stove in orange juice and brown sugar
• cook them on the stove in butter and dill

Baby Carrots. With baby carrots, which typically come prewashed and peeled, over time they seem to acquire a coating that feels a bit slimy...the product of being sealed in bags without being dried well enough after washing. If caught soon enough, these carrots can be restored to their normal tastiness by washing them under warm water and being given a quick once-over with a vegetable brush.

All Carrots. In the case of regular and baby carrots, sometimes guinea pigs bite off and leave pieces of the outside of the carrot but finish the innermost part. When this happens:

1. Give the outside of the carrots in the current bag a good scrubbing and/or peeling
2. Run what's left across a grater (the same side you'd use for cheese) or through the chop cycle in your food processor
3. Mix the shredded or chopped carrot into your guinea pig's daily "salad" (hiding the carrot will appeal to their foraging instincts)

If you have a food dehydrator, I know of a family that slices carrots and makes "carrot chips" (unseasoned!) for their guinea pigs and rabbits!

Guinea Pigs & Their Carrots (Part I)

I'd be surprised if there's a guinea pig out there who doesn't like carrots. Personally, I have yet to find one.

Guinea pigs love carrots like chocaholics love chocolate. A guinea pig will dive into a fresh carrot with the same gusto that a child dives into an Easter basket. It's a high point of their day. And when they finish what you give them, they'll stare up at you sweetly, as if telepathically trying to say to you, "May I have another, please?" It's hard to deny them and, thus, easy to help them over-indulge.

But carrots, as healthy as they are, require some moderation in a guinea pig's diet. Just as too much Vitamin A in a human's diet can be detrimental over time, so too can it be for guinea pigs. But there's an even more immediate concern. That sweet taste that carrots are known for means sugar (albeit natural) -- and too much sugar in a guinea pig's diet makes them as susceptible to diabetes as humans.

It's not uncommon for new guinea pig owners to overfeed carrots on a daily basis, offering a handful (five or more) of baby carrots or dropping a huge "regular" carrot into the cage. Even though our feeding recommendations (and those at Guinea Lynx) include a note about carrots, we often have to call special attention to "portion sizes" for carrots.

• 1 to 2 baby carrots OR
• equivalent-sized portion sliced off from a carefully cleaned "regular" carrot

Depending on how exacting you want to be, you can determine "equivalent-sized portions" by weighing, measuring, or eyeballing. Some owners who already buy large bags of carrots for their households, and aren't willing to buy a second bag just to have baby carrots, make a habit of cleaning a couple of carrots at a time and cutting them into pieces about the same size as baby carrots. If you have a budget you need to follow, this can be much more economical than buying bags of baby carrots.

If you've been overfeeding carrots to your guinea pigs, you'll need to cut back. Guinea pigs get comfortable in their routines, and most owners swear that their pigs can count carrots. Depending on how good your brood is at begging and mooching, coordinate with other family members about when carrots will be fed during the day and how much. You also might consider gradually cutting back over the course of a couple of days, putting something else into the daily salad (perhaps a piece of sweet bell pepper or a small chunk of cucumber), and making sure there's plenty of fresh hay in the cage.

What to do with the extra carrots left in your fridge? They make a great snack for us dipped into a little ranch dressing or hummus!

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Celery?

Not a week goes by that we don't get asked about feeding celery to guinea pigs. Or that we run across someone who is feeding too much celery to their guinea pigs on a daily basis.

Admittedly, celery has some attractive qualities, two being that it's crunchy and filling. Guinea pigs do love celery leaves, and some do love the satisfying crunch of the celery stalks. But there's a few things to keep in mind about celery:

• It has a high water content.
• It causes bloating and gas in humans (when eaten frequently or in large quantities), so you can imagine what it does to a guinea pig's belly.
• All those strings that we peel off celery stalks so they don't get caught in our teeth or in our throats also wreak havoc on a guinea pig's teeth, throat, and intestinal tract.

It's best to think of celery as an "accent" to your guinea pigs' daily salad, served in small quantities.

• Mix celery leaves in with a serving of lettuce and other vegetables.
• Thinly slice celery stalks, which makes it easy to find and remove strings. 
• Consider giving it on alternate days to help keep some variety in your pigs' diet.

Using these tips can help you ensure that you don't overfeed celery, or that your guinea pigs don't become quickly bored with it. Additionally, by mixing it in with other veggies, you can make meal time a little more interesting for your guinea pigs as they forage through breakfast (or dinner).

Don't forget to set aside a stalk or two for yourself!