Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Product Review: Healthy Pet Confetti Pet Bedding

Recently, our humans found a new brand of bedding that looks a lot like Carefresh, called Healthy Pet Confetti Pet Bedding.

It's like that Carefresh Confetti stuff.
Very colorful. 
Feels like a party!
We decided to look into Healthy Pet since we've never heard of them before, and discovered something interesting: this stuff actually is the same stuff as Carefresh. This is from the Pet Industry Distributor's Association:
Effective today, Absorption Corp is excited to announce its new identity as Healthy Pet®, reflecting its focus as a pet products company. A new logo and website [www.healthy-pet.com] have debuted to effect the change immediately, with all other company contact points making the transition over the next 30 days. The Healthy Pet® brand has been in use by Absorption for both cat and small animal products, and will now become its corporate brand as well. Healthy Pet® will be an umbrella for all of the company’s pet products, with major category brands such as CareFRESH and Critter Care maintaining strong product visibility to ensure consumer familiarity and loyalty.
If you go to the Healthy Pet website, you can see that Carefresh is still listed as one of their brands; they haven't gotten rid of it and replaced it with Healthy Pet. So why does there seem to be both Healthy Pet and Carefresh bedding on the market? We're not entirely sure. The humans got this stuff at a supermarket pet aisle rather than one of the pet stores where they normally get Carefresh. Maybe pet stores get the Carefresh brand, and the grocery stores get Healthy Pet brand? Who knows?

Since this is basically the same stuff as Carefresh Confetti, it gets the same rating: 4/5 stars. (Like Carefresh Confetti, this stuff was also a bit expensive.)

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Can Guinea Pigs Eat White Carrots?

Long-time readers know that carrots are probably our favorite food. But did you know that carrots come in colors other than orange? There are also purple, black, white, yellow and red carrots. Our humans recently found some "White Satin Carrots" at the farmer's market and brought some back for us. This means we'll get to find out if white carrots are just as good as the orange kind that we know and love.

Remember, guinea pigs can have the equivalent of about 1 baby carrot per piggy per day.

These are white carrots, not parsnips. (They do look very similar to parsnips, though.)
Broccoli wants to eat his separately from the rest of us.

And now Buffy moves hers to the side. I control the blue plate!

Munching on carrots with the plate to myself. I'm living the dream!

Honestly, white carrots tasted the same to us as the orange ones. However, according to the World Carrot Museum, there are a few differences:

  • White carrots tend to be sweeter, juicier, and have a "smoother flavor"
  • White carrots are the least healthy type due to the lack of bioavailable carotenoids that other types of carrots have. (They still have some healthy stuff in them, though. Just not as much.)
  • White carrots are a good choice for those with carotene-allergies.
  • The white color is a fun novelty for those used to orange carrots.

To us, carrots are carrots, and all carrots are delicious! We give white carrots 5/5 stars!

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Cavy Savvy 400th Post Celebration and Giveaway!

We did it! We reached our 400th post! Who knew back when we started this blog in 2011 that we'd still be reviewing foods and products and giving out advice in 2015? For our 200th and 300th posts, we ate the number out of foods. We now consider this a Cavy Savvy tradition, and aren't about to break tradition now. (Especially when the tradition involved eating delicious food!)

Here's the number 400 made out of carrots, pears, and lettuce
Well, it was the number 400. Now I guess we'll have to post 100 more times before we can eat numbers again.
To celebrate this achievement, we're going to be doing another giveaway! In past giveaways, the prize is typically something for guinea pigs to enjoy, such as a snuggle hut, a guinea pig costume, treats, and so on. This time, we're going to do something different and give away a prize for the humans. After all, they deserve one for buying our food, cleaning our cages, and all the other things they do for us.

This time, the prize is a guinea pig necklace from The Magic Zoo:

I'd wear that if I were a human! But since I'm a guinea pig, I'd probably just chew up the string. Probably best to keep it away if you value it.
Here are the giveaway 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, as well as your favorite Cavy Savvy post.
  • All entries must be received by February 1st, 2015 at 12:00 pm (US Eastern time) to be eligible.
  • One winner will be chosen at random from all eligible entries and announced on this blog on February 1st sometime after the giveaway closes. 
  • The winner will be instructed to email us to provide us with a mailing address to send the prize to. Winners must provide us with a mailing address within 30 days to receive their prize.

Good luck!

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Product Review: The Busy Bunny's Willow Ball

As we mentioned in our recent review of the Busy Bunny's Chew Ring, Small Pet Select is now carrying a few select products from the Busy Bunny on their website, so we decided to try some. This is the second product from the Busy Bunny we ordered with our hay.

I don't see any peanuts in the middle this time.
Eh. I'll play with it later.
Still thinking about playing with it. Maybe later.
As we previously mentioned, willow is safe for guinea pigs to chew on, and it's probably better for us than the Snak Shak products. However, we face the dilemma that we imagine human dieters face when they're deciding between rice cakes and pizza: do I want healthy and bland, or something somewhat unhealthy but delicious? Unfortunately, this products just can't hold our interest like the Snak Shaks can. We did give the willow ball a few nibbles, and it's not bad, but we're just not that enthusiastic about it.

We'll give Busy Bunny's Willow Ball 2/5 stars.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Guinea Pigs in Hats

Although we generally try to stick to informative posts, every now and then, we'll come across something that's just too fun not to share. This time, it's a site devoted to guinea pig wearing hats:

http://www.guineapigsinhats.com/

In honor of this fun site, we're going to share our own hat-wearing pictures, thanks to some guinea pig-sized hats from Vietnam that a human friend brought us:

Don't I look cool in my new hat?
I don't know... I feel ridiculous. What's the deal with these hats, anyway?
These are Asian conical hats designed to protect from sun and rain. 
We look so good, we may just have to submit our pictures to that site!