. The Cavy Care site is a featured site in geocities. Now I have to work even harder to make sure it's content is good and accurate.Spazz and Manda Mae were "inherited" from our oldest daughter, she thought the pigs might not like living in a house with two cats that grew up on the riverfront of Albany New York. Once the Guinea Pigs arrived we discovered that these are the most cuddly, most charming and most adorable pet we've ever had. Therefore we began learning as much as we could about how to care for them properly. I quickly found the Guinea Pig Daily Digest (GPDD), provided by Carlo Ferrari in Italy. This is a "listserv" that takes e-mail sent to it, groups the mail together into a digest format, and sends it back out to the subscribers. From this we very quickly learned about the proper food, bedding and housing for guinea pigs (also known as cavies). In addition, we found others that were as interested in getting good information out to the internet community; along the way on these pages you'll meet some of these wonderful people. We have also had our first ever GPDD "Pignic" where people interested in these lovely little animals got together and visited, cuddled each others pigs and shared information about their antics and care. This will become, at least, an annual event!
From this information, I have created a site on Cavy Care, just follow the curious piggie! . The Cavy Care site is a featured site in geocities. Now I have to work even harder to make sure it's content is good and accurate.
One of the people that I "met" on the GPDD has also created a magnificent site. He is called Seagull and his site contains pages and pages of wonderful information about proper care for these adorable animals. Several of his pages are referenced from the Cavy Care section mentioned above. He has a page or two about cages; I have also created a page with information about the cages my gang lives in. Now on to the introductions!
Honeybear's litter was four babies born on 10 February, 1997. The boys are:
Black Satin male named Charlie
Silver Agouti male named Cholo
and Dilute Agouti male named Mishka.
Mother and children are all doing fine. She had them about 9:00 a.m. and they were immediately up and about. The boys are now five months old and have lost all of their baby looks, the Agoutis have had their coat darken with a decidedly black tint. I've been told by a breeder that this is perfectly normal. The boys now have their own dorm, lots of room and plenty of food and water, so of course they try to escape and get into Mom's little cage. They also have the raging hormone problems of all young males. If they don't watch it they'll all get "Tutored" before they're much older. The great thing is, except for an occasional argument over a bit of pepper, the boys get along wonderfully. In the above picture their coats haven't started darkening. If Charlie's coat is darkening, you'd never know it, he was already a beautiful shade of black to begin with!
More pictures of the boys.
Spazz is the neutered male of the clan; born in November 1994. He would be classed as a "Abbyruvian" since his body hair is long but his face is shorter haired with whorls in some funny places. We had him neutered because we wanted him to be able to live with Manda Mae without creating more babies. Sometimes he thinks he's okay, struts around and acts all macho, but then gets frustrated. The love of his life is Manda Mae, often deferring to her for water or pellets. He loves green peppers, leaf lettuce and cucumber (which he eats in the following order 1-green rind, 2-white meat 3-ignore seeds). When he eats hay, he loves to burrow into the pile and eat from the inside out; unfortunately this has led to a small injury to the cornea of his right eye. It doesn't seem to bother him, he keeps right on burrowing!
In the morning he is very grumpy and positively antisocial (unless you have some treats). He still seems unsure what to make of Manda Mae's attitude towards Honeybear; generally he just stays out of MM's way when she gets in one of her "moods." When the babies were born, he became even more confused. He can tell that they are cavies, like himself, but why are they so small? So he goes over to their cage and checks them out, and if they come to check on him, he gets skittish! Of course the babies are now nearly as big as he is, and just as macho. So he now knows what to do! Defend his right as the Alpha male! Still hasn't figured out that he ain't exactly a male anymore (sigh). So he gets all his floor time with the ladies, tough life if you can handle it.
More pictures of Spazz
.
Manda Mae, or Manda, or MM is the boss pig. She is an Abbysinian, born about the same time as Spazz. She use to be smaller than Spazz, however, she runs the Main Caviary! She gets the choicest veggies and will even steal them right out of Spazz's mouth! She will eat all of a cucumber, loves baby carrots (frequently has an orange moustache) but will not eat regular carrots. This may explain why she weighs in at 2 lb. 14 oz.(1.3 kg)! She tends to be very skittish. She has had one litter with Spazz, four babies, all of whom were given to good homes. She is very rude to Honeybear, although I have been told she is trying to train her. Her training techniques consist of chasing Honeybear away from everything that Manda wants. Since the babies were born, she has acted much better. I think she was trying to act "motherly" towards the babies. Of course, Honeybear did not taking this lying down! Now that the boys are in their own place (The Boys' Dorm) Manda will occassionally walk over there. This causes all the boys to purr and wiggle and knaw on the wood panels (reminds me of some "older women" who like having younger men admire them, tho they'd never admit it). Makes for some interesting floor time! Of course, now she thinks she can boss both Honeybear and her daughter Penny around!
More pictures of Manda Mae
.
Honeybear is my Christmas present from Betsy (my wife). She is an adorable little critter (Betsy's pretty cute too!). She is a Golden Agouti. She will cuddle with anyone and gives little kisses on the chin and cheek. When laying on my "piggie shelf" (my stomach is a tad large) she constantly chatters and looks around. If you pet her, she will eventually settle down and form a kind of "U" shape with her head on your elbow, chest down in the gap and butt on the stomach and roll to the side! If she gets really comfortable, her rear legs go out backwards, making her look something like a road-kill toad. While she was pregnant, she looked like a boston cream pie with a cute little face. Right now she lives in a seperate cage, I refer to this as the Girls' Condo. She weighs in at about 2lb.13oz, so she would be a fair match for Manda, I'm just not sure about letting her and MM fight it out!
Penny was born February 10, 1997. She died in my arms on August 25, 1998, only 18 months old. She was a Golden Agouti, like her mom, except she had a small white blaze on her forehead. At times it looked a lot like the Nike Swoosh! And she had the attitude for it! She was always wandering off to explore, she'd rather explore than eat, which is part of why she's so small, when she lost interest in her food and went exploring, Honeybear would go and eat the veggie that Penny left behind. Frequently you could find the two girls cuddled together under the shelf of the Girls' Condo, because the lighting isn't always the best under there it was often hard to tell which girl was which. They both have the same dark, shiny coat, same huge dark eyes and the same whitish muzzle. Once in a while you'd think it was Penny and it turned out to be Honeybear, or the other way around!
Unfortunely, the reason Penny was so small is that she had an ongoing problem with her system. At the very tender age of two months she had her first bladder infection, after that she had three more, each one more severe. Along with the infections, she eventually developed an extremely large bladder stone. Finally, at the tender age of 18 months she finally succumbed to the infection. We will miss our little piggie princess very much. She was the best cuddler, best purrer of the gang. And always up for some exploration!
More pictures of Honeybear and Penny.
A great cartoon by Randy Glasbergen who can be found at Daily Cartoon with a Guinea Pig theme. He tells me he will be inheriting two of them when his daughter leaves for college in the fall (another poor human who's mind will be taken control of!).
Get your own Free Home Page