Cavy Savvy 300th Post Celebration and Giveaway!

Can you believe it? It's our 300th post! So many foods devoured, products reviewed and questions answered during these last 3 years. Time to celebrate!

In honor of our 300th post, we're going to eat the number 300 made out of collard greens, kiwi and apple.

Accomplishment tastes delicious!

We're feeling good about our accomplishment, so we want to spread a little holiday joy. This means it's time for a new giveaway! We are going to be giving away two prizes this time: the first is a Guinea Pig Snuggle Hut by DreamersStudio. (This a product we've never reviewed before, so the grand prize winner is also invited to do a guest post review of the Snuggle Hut if he or she would like.) The second is a bag of Oxbow Organic Barley Biscuits.

Grand Prize image from DreamersStudio on Etsy

As usual, here are the rules:

Contest Rules:

• You must be a resident of the continental United States.
• You have to be a follower of this blog. To follow us, just click the "join this site" button on the right.
• To enter, leave a comment on this blog post expressing your interest in participating in the contest. 
• Two winners (1 grand prize winner, and 1 second prize winner) will be chosen at random and announced on this blog on December 17th. All entries must be received by December 17th at 12:00 pm (US Eastern time) to be eligible.

Good luck!

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Stonehead Cabbage?

Today we're reviewing Stonehead Cabbage. This food isn't on any of the food charts that we know of, so it took some research to determine whether it was safe to eat. Stonehead cabbage is a type ("cultivar," or cultivated variety) of cabbage. There are 73 cultivars of cabbage in the United States, according to one source, although there are just three main groups of cabbage: green, red and Savoy, and we can eat all three. (Chinese cabbage, AKA bok choy, is a different species, which we can eat as well.) So even though we didn't find anything specific on stonehead cabbage on the food charts, since we can eat all three major groups of cabbage about 2-4 times per week in small portions (because they are very gassy), we're going to recommend you feed us stonehead cabbage no more often than this (and also in small portions).

Fun fact: The stonehead cabbage gets its name from the density of the cabbage head, which can weigh 4-6 pounds! 

This is nowhere near 4-6 pounds of cabbage! Why must you be a gassy food, stonehead cabbage?

The last piece... Don't even think about it, Broccoli! It's mine!

Hey! Not cool! I called it!

So it looks like the struggle for dominance continues. Why won't you just give up, Broccoli? I was here first, and I'm obviously the natural choice to lead this herd.

Oh, right. We were reviewing stonehead cabbage. It was delicious enough to fight over, so it deserves 5/5 stars!

Product Review: Vitakraft Timothy Hay Sweet Grass

Once again, the humans forgot to order more Small Pet Select hay in time, and we ran out. Criticizing the humans isn't working, so we're thinking of using positive reinforcement the next time the humans remember to order more hay on time. You have our permission to eat a cupcake or cronut, or whatever you humans like to eat. Deal?

This time, the humans the humans bought us Vitakraft Timothy Hay Sweet Grass to deal with the hay shortage.

Looks okay at a glance...

Why is the hay in giant bundled bricks?

It's not bad...

The hay was okay, but not great. It was not very fresh, certainly not as fresh as the Small Pet Select we usually get. Also, it didn't have a lot of the fat seed-heads, which are our favorite part. Finally, each piece of hay was cut up into short pieces, which meant it would spill out of our hay ball and fall onto the floor. Therefore, we'll give Vitakraft Timothy Hay Sweet Grass 2/5 stars.

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Acorn Squash?

Do you ever have a problem with lazy humans? They go to someplace called "work" all day, then they come home and don't feel like doing anything useful, like buying new foods and products for us guinea pigs to try. Well, we came up with an idea: why not suggest that some of the new foods we want to eat can also be used by the humans for their own treats? We found a recipe for "Classic Baked Acorn Squash" that they seemed to love, and we got to have some acorn squash before they did. (By the way, make sure your humans don't share any of their treat. They'll put stuff on their acorn squash we shouldn't eat like butter, and we should always eat uncooked foods anyways.)

Acorn squash is a winter squash, which means we can have it 2-4 times per week. Don't feed us the stem, skin, seeds or stringy parts around the seeds. Just feed us some raw cubes of the orange flesh.

There's edible goodies inside there.

And there they are!

I am the guardian of the plate!

We finished every last bite of this delicious food. Acorn squash gets 5/5 stars!

Can Guinea Pigs Learn Tricks?

Our humans have pretty much given up on getting us to stop rattling the bars of our cage. However, that doesn't mean guinea pigs can't be trained, as the cute piggies in this YouTube video demonstrate:

These piggies got a treat for doing tricks. Maybe we just need the proper motivation to not chew on the bars. How about a treat for every minute we don't chew on the bars? What do you say, humans?

Guest Piggies: Fluffy, Olympia, Sandy and Celery

It's once again time for us to turn the keyboard over to some of our adorable readers out there. You're up, Fluffy, Olympia, Sandy and Celery!

Hello! My name is Fluffy! I am the dominant piggie on our island of cavies. I love my water...(as you can see by my photo).

I'm Olympia. I'm the same age as Fluffy (both of us are four years old), but I'm very shy. Despite my shyness, I'm very curious. The humans think my round nose is very cute.

Hi, I'm Sandy. I'm even shyer than Olympia. The only time I'll ever say hi to the humans is 1) if they have bananas or they smell like bananas or 2) if they have an Oxbow Timothy Treat.

I'm Celery, the youngest of the piggies and the only boy! I was actually sold as a girl at Petco, but they made a mistake. I wish that I could type a whole paragraph on myself, but I can't...

We like to play with each other, and it is very fun. We also all read Cavy Savvy. We try some of the foods that the Cavy Savvy pigs recommend. Thank you to Lola, Buffy, and Broccoli for inspiring us to try new foods!

Cavy Savvy 200 Members Fall Giveaway: Winner Announcement

And the winner of our fall giveaway is...

Marianberry! You can let Merry, Pippin, and Fatty know that tasty Oxbow treats will soon be on their way! Just send us an email at cavysavvyaguineapigblog@gmail.com with your mailing address and we will send you your prize.

Thanks to all who entered! We will be holding another contest soon, so keep checking back.

To everyone else: You might not have won the treats, but if you read our blog, you're still winners in my eyes!