Review of Carefresh Ultra Pet Bedding

Back in April, we posted "10 Things You Should Know Before Buying or Adopting a Guinea Pig." Number two on that list (appropriately enough!) was "All that eating leads to a lot of waste." Buffy and I care about our blog, so we try to use pictures without lots of guinea pig poop in them. Ordinarily, the humans buy us the brown Carefresh bedding, which makes the waste less visible. The problem with Carefresh Ultra is that it's white. I mean, really bright white. That means that the stuff we usually try to downplay becomes really visible.

Look how white that stuff is. This stuff made it look like it snowed in our cage.

Yuck! That's unsightly! (Do we really want this on the blog?)

Just look at our cute faces and ignore the mess, okay?

Other than the color, this stuff works great, just like the other Carefresh. It controls odor, it clumps, and it's comfortable for us to walk on. But we've got to take off a point for appearances. 4/5 stars.

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Watercress?

Today we're going to review herb #4: Watercress. Watercress should only be fed to your piggy once or twice per week.

As usual, I lead...

...and Buffy follows!

Buffy, I feel like we're sharing a real moment here. (You're going to get it if you eat any pieces I've got my eye on, though!)

Although some guinea pigs don't care for watercress at all (examples: 1, 2), we thought watercress was good. We'll give it 4.5/5 stars.

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Asian Pears?

There's a list of foods guinea pigs can eat at The Guinea Pig Hutch, which has a "question foods" section for foods they just don't know enough about to say if they're okay for us to eat or not. For some reason, a lot of the question foods are Asian fruits. We don't know why. If anyone knows which ones are safe, please comment! We'd love to try lychee or mangosteen if they're safe for us. One of the few Asian fruits that's on the safe list is Asian pears, which we're reviewing today.

Asian pears are delicious! 5/5 stars!

Happy Fourth of July!

Kleenmama Hayloft Hay for Guinea Pigs Review

Up until now, the humans have primarily fed us Oxbow hay. We love it. It has a great percentage of seed heads to crunchy green stalks. But at around $10 for bag, it is rather expensive. Petco's brand of Natural Premium Timothy Hay is less expensive, but it is not as tasty. It's more yellow than green and has fewer seed heads and we just don't like it as much as Oxbow. 

But we go through a bag of hay per week, so the humans began exploring more economical ways to keep us well fed. Guinea pigs need unlimited, unrestricted access to fresh hay. Hay is really the most important part of our diet, and choosing the right hay for your budget and piggies is a task worth exploring.

We heard great things about Kleenmama hay (now called Hayloft) from other guinea pigs. Even with shipping, this hay cost way less than any other hay out there, and it comes right to your door. We had high hopes for this hay, and we were very excited when the 15lb box of second cut timothy hay arrived at our pigloo door.

But for the first two weeks, we really didn't know what to make of it. It was bright green and clearly fresh, though it did have fewer seed heads. It was just very different from the pet store hay we were used to eating. We honestly did not like it very much at first. We wheeked and pushed the hay around our cage. We didn't eat it and the humans began to worry about us.

New hay!

Hmmm... 

In fact, Buffy lost 30 grams over those two weeks and Lola lost 27 grams. While guinea pig weights can vary due to a number of different factors, losing this much weight and not eating much of the hay was worrisome.

After about two weeks, we realized that this new hay was not going to hurt us, and we began to eat it up more enthusiastically. We gained back some of the weight we lost. We are starting to like Hayloft hay more and more each day.

But you know what? This isn't Hayloft's fault. Astute readers will notice what our humans did wrong: rather than introduce this new alien hay bit by bit into our diet, they cut off our supply of our usual hay all at once and just started feeding us this strange new hay out of the blue. What they should have done is introduce it gradually into our diet. Start out by mixing 75% old, familiar hay and 25% new hay, then increase it to 50/50, then 75/25, and finally switch to 100% of the new product. That would have been less of a shock to our systems. I guess they were just too excited about the new hay to remember to do it.

So in conclusion, we will be asking our humans for Hayloft hay from now on. We may even wish to experiment with first and third cut hay types!

(Because the humans messed up, we're going to hold off of rating Hayloft hay for now. We feel we haven't given it a fair trial yet.)

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Santa Claus Melon?

Did you know that there is a Wikipedia entry on "Christmas in July" about Christmas-themed parties held during this month? I'm not sure if the humans planned this, but we just had a little Christmas in July party in our guinea pig cage. There was no drinking at this party (except from our water bottle), but there was good food. We got to try Santa Claus Melon.

Wow, is that whole thing for us? It's bigger than the plate!

Oh, I see. The cut-up bits are going to be ours. I guess we couldn't have eaten the whole thing anyway.

Thank you, Santa Claus!

This is a great Christmas in July party!

Santa Claus melon, also known as Christmas melon, tastes a lot like Honeydew melon with a hint of cucumber. We liked it a bit better than Honeydew melon, but we weren't as enthusiastic about it as some of the red fruits we've been eating recently. So, we'll give it 4/5 stars. (I hope we won't get lumps of coal next Christmas in July for taking off a star!)

Toys for Guinea Pigs: Paper Bags

At www.guineapigcages.com, you can find lots of great guinea pig toy ideas. The humans decided to try giving us a paper bag to try as a toy.

Lola approached the paper bag...

...but got scared and ran to the opposite corner!

I wasn't scared, but wasn't sure how to get in at first.

The humans decided to put some hay and a sliced-up grape in the bag. I just followed my nose and found the entrance!

Even after Lola saw me get in and out of the paper bag, she was still scared. The humans watched her for several minutes to see if she'd warm up to the idea of going in. She didn't. They tried to lead her with a piece of hay to the entrance, which she'd follow right up to the entrance, and then run away. The humans even tried cutting a hole in the side of the bag, but she didn't care. She's the dominant guinea pig, and yet she's scared of a paper bag? It doesn't make sense to me, but it meant that I was able to eat all the food the humans put in the bag by myself without Lola harassing me. Hooray for paper bags, I say! I'd love to give them five stars for this reason, but then I'd have to hide in the paper bag indefinitely from Lola, so I'll be fair and give them 3/5 stars.