We Won A CareFresh Honorable Mention

Hey humans! We just now realized that the 4th of July video we submitted to the official CareFresh YouTube site won an honorable mention on their video of the month contest! This happened six months ago and we are just now learning about it, but hey, we're happy about it nonetheless. Here's our winning video:

What we're not happy about is that someone actually disliked our video! We're pretty sure it was a rival piggie, since many of the other videos in voting were also voted thumbs down by someone. Not cool, other piggie. Play fair, or Lola will hunt you down, and "burrr" loudly at you. Which can be pretty scary.

We will be submitting another video soon. The winner of the month gets a free 60L bag of CareFresh! And the winner of the year gets a free one year's supply of CafeFresh. We think that award has our names all over it, so be sure to vote for us once we submit it.

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Blackberries?

We like berries. As our readers know, we liked blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries. If it has the word "berry" in it, we'll probably gobble it up, so we were looking forward to trying blackberries. Blackberries can be fed to us 2-4 times per week in 25-gram portions. It's not uncommon to find aphids on blackberries, so make sure you inspect them before buying them, and wash them thoroughly before giving them to your piggies.

If the humans give you something delicious, it's always best to hide behind a large object so Lola won't find you!

Shh! She's looking for me. Don't tell her you saw me.

Like other berries, all three of us found blackberries to be delicious (Broccoli wouldn't let the humans near him with the camera- he took the blackberry and ran off). Blackberries are composed of many small parts, which meant there were lots of bite-sized pieces for us to snack on individually. This made them more fun to eat. We'll give blackberries 5/5 stars.

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Satsuma?

Satsuma is not just a good name for a female guinea pig. It's also a citrus fruit that looks like a large tangerine with a big leaf. You should only feed us about half a segment of satsuma twice a week. The humans didn't read that before giving us a whole segment, which means we probably won't get another one this week. Darn.

For me? 

Buffy's hiding from Lola while she eats.  

Satsunas have a milder taste than tangerines and most other orange citrus fruit; they're less sweet and tart. However, they are still delicious. 5/5 stars!

Feeding Your Guinea Pig Wheatgrass

We came across this video of two guinea pigs named Riku and Sora eating some wheatgrass that their human grew for them. Did you know that you can grow wheatgrass from the wheat berries sold at places like Whole Foods? Neither did we! But we think it will be fun to try it, so we've sent our humans out to get some wheat berries. According to the human in the video, growing wheatgrass takes about one week, so we will try it and report back later. In the meantime, check out Riku and Sora:

Fleece Bedding For Guinea Pigs - Update

Well, humans, it turns out the fleece bedding had some unanticipated problems that we encountered by the third day. While the fleece bedding turned out to do a good job of keeping the cage neat, it did start to smell by day 3. The humans will try to add baking soda in between the layers of fleece next week, so we will let you know if that helps.

Our cage is messy! The air is not as smelly up here.

The other problem is that the humans bought a cheap dust buster from Target to clean stray poops and hay pieces from the floor of our cage, but Target forgot to include a wall charger! So we have not been happy piggies this week since that meant that we had to have baths. Go back to Target and return that dust buster humans! We expect daily vacuuming in our cage.

Finally, because the fleece needed to be washed twice weekly (instead of once a week, like the humans initially thought), that brings the weekly cost of bedding from $3.50 to $7.00. At that price, it's been just as expensive as buying Carefresh (which cost about $15 per 60L bag, which lasts two weeks, when bought online in bulk).

Still, we think the benefit of having a neater cage and plush fleece is better than Carefresh overall, so we will stick with it for a while. More updates soon.

Fleece Bedding For Guinea Pigs

There was a big change that happened to the cage today. We got beautiful new fleece carpet installed! The humans decided that they've had it with traditional litter like Carefresh cage bedding. We love Carefresh, but apparently Carefresh is pretty expensive. We love our new fleece bedding just as much.

It's like carpeting for our cage!

Here are our thoughts on the difference between lining a guinea pig cage with Carefresh bedding vs. fleece bedding.

Carefresh pros:

• Safe
• Easy to find in most pet stores

Carefresh Cons: 

• Expensive. Even when buying in bulk, it can cost $15 for a two week supply
• Messy, the litter can easily get outside of the cage 
• Somewhat difficult to clean
• Not as good as fleece for the environment

Now for our review of fleece bedding for guinea pig cages. This is the first time we've had anything other than litter lining out cage. 

Fleece Pros:

• Inexpensive. A double thick sheet was only $17 and it's reusable.
• Better for the environment since it can be reused.
• Also safe, no dust, and soft.
• Doesn't fall outside of the cage like litter- makes the cage look neater.
• Soft and fuzzy to nap in.

Fleece Cons:

• Humans have to vacuum daily with a dust buster to control waste.
• Has to be washed in a washing machine weekly- or more often depending on the size of your cage and number of pigs.
• Fabric can pill.
• Initially it isn't as absorbent as Carefresh, but after several washes it will be.
• You have to also put down a towel or two under the fleece to absorb moisture.

Good Human!

One of our humans was a guest blogger at Guinea Pig Today ("Can Guinea Pigs Learn?"). Good job, human! Now that you've proven yourself, maybe one day we'll let you do a guest blog here.

Is someone talking about me?

Review of All Living Things Small Animal Bed, Large

All Living Things is the same company that made our carriers, which we like, so we were excited to try this bed. It actually looks more like a love seat than a bed, but we won't deduct any stars for that. Buffy and I both would tentatively sniff it and dare each other to go onto it, but it took a few minutes to work up the courage to try it. We did, and it was comfy, but there's no top over it like a pigloo so we always felt exposed in it. We need a roof over our heads to really curl up and relax. One of the humans decided that since we weren't using it much that Broccoli should have it:

How can he relax without a roof over his head? He's either brave or crazy!

Another nice feature of this bed is that it comes with clips on the back so you don't have to worry about your cage-mate moving from the spot you want it in. It also has those cool stripes on the sides. Buffy and I would give it 3 stars while Broccoli would give it 5 stars; we'll split the difference and do 4 stars with the caveat that your piggy may feel exposed and not use it much, so hold on to the receipt until you know your piggy loves it. 

Happy 2012!

Happy New Year, humans! Today we announce the winner of the guinea pig shaped soap. Drum roll, please...

The winner of the Cavy Savvy giveaway contest is.... Jessie H.! E-mail me with your contact info at cavysavvyaguineapigblog@gmail.com and we will mail you your prize. Congratulations, and thanks to all who entered. We will definitively be doing more contests in the future, so stay tuned!