Guinea Pig World Records

Although she doesn't do it as much anymore given her age and health condition, Buffy used to be quite a jumper. She'd jump up on top of pigloos and the platform on the smaller cage. Thinking about this got me wondering what the world record is for guinea pig jumps, which then got me thinking about guinea pig world records in general.

Here are some fun guinea pig world records:

• We previously said that the the longest living guinea pig lived 14 years, 10.5 months. That guinea pig's name was Snowball. We have subsequently learned that there was a guinea pig named Sweetie, who claimed to have lived from October 1996 to July 2014-- a total of 18 years! We don't know if this record has been Guiness-verified, though. 
• The long jump record for guinea pigs (as of 2012) was 18.9 inches, held by Truffles:
  
  Here's his award:

  

  Good job, Truffles! (image source)

• We found a video which seemed to show an even longer guinea pig jump in 2015, although we're unsure if it's Guiness-verified. In this video, Piglet jumps 66 cm (about 26 inches):
  
• As of 2012, the highest jump by a guinea pig was 7.8 inches (20 cm). 
• The fastest 10 meter run by a guinea pig was 8.81 seconds by Flash in 2009. 

If you think you can beat any of these records, you can register at the Guinness website. If you succeed, you'll be immortalized alongside Truffles and the others. (That is, until the next record-breaking guinea pig comes along!)

I wonder if there are any awards that we would qualify for. I don't think either of us can outrun or out-jump these piggies. Maybe if there was a "longest-running awesome blog written by guinea pigs" category?

Antibiotics and the Guinea Pig Microbiome

After the vet diagnosed me with a uterine mass that was most likely cancer, I was put on a variety of different medicines. Several weeks ago, I was able to stop taking the Enroflaxacin, which is an antibiotic. Antibiotics are a type of medicine that you have to be careful with. Part of the reason for this is that the overuse of antibiotics can give rise to bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, making them less effective of a treatment.

There's another reason you need to be careful with antibiotics, though. Antibiotics work by targeting bacterial cells in your body, but not all bacteria are bad. Your body has friendly bacteria in it that do good things that help keep you healthy; for example, some good bacteria can help your body digest things that it wouldn't be able to digest on its own. Also, when the friendly bacteria are killed off, that leaves room for other bad bacteria to move in and multiply. For example, humans who take antibiotics for too long may kill off the friendly bacteria in their intestines, and a bad bacteria called clostridium difficile can move in and cause nausea, inflammation, and other symptoms. 

This ecosystem of bacteria living inside our bodies is called the microbiome. According to a scientific study, the guinea pig microbiome has even greater "bacterial richness" than humans! There's still a lot we don't understand about how the microbiome works, but there are a couple things that do seem clear. First, it's probably good to eat a varied diet to encourage microbiome diversity. Second, you'll want to be careful with antibiotics, and only take them when necessary, and only for as long as necessary.

Check out this colorful, tasty salad. I like helping my microbiome!

And so does Broccoli (om nom nom)

Book Review: Guinea Pig Pride & Prejudice

We don't usually do book reviews on Cavy Savvy. Unlike blogs. books are made of paper, and paper is way too tempting to chew on. However. today we're going to make an exception this time and review A Guinea Pig Pride & Prejudice.

The original Pride and Prejudice, according to Wikipedia, "is a novel of manners by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character, Elizabeth Bennet, as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of the British Regency."

Is it just us, or is anyone else starting to feel a little sleepy just from reading that sentence? And the actual text of the story isn't any better. Fortunately. in the guinea pig version, we have pictures of guinea pigs in costumes to liven up this musty old story:

Adorable!

We would have preferred a more interesting story, and frankly don't understand why the original Pride and Prejudice did so well among so many humans. Fortunately, we do understand and appreciate the great guinea pig costumes in the guinea pig version! We'll give Guinea Pig Pride & Prejudice 4 out of 5 stars!

Product Review: All Living Things Bottle Brush

As we've mentioned before, we're not very happy with the water bottle we currently have because it's hard for the humans to clean. It's unpleasant to hear our humans complain about how hard it is to reach deep down into the bottle to clean out the gunk that accumulates. We've tried getting flip-top water bottles before, which should have solved the problem, but which leaked so badly that they were unusable.

The humans brought home All Living Things Bottle Brush the other day in order to make cleaning our current water bottle easier without buying one of those leaky flip-top water bottles. (It could have just been the brand. If anyone can recommend any reliable flip-top bottles, please let us know in the comments section.)

Can this brush prevent the humans from complaining about how hard our water bottle is to clean?

Today, the humans gave it a shot.

Looks a lot easier now.

The brush bristles moved, allowing the thicker end to fit easily into the bottle. Because it was so wide, the humans were able to wipe off all that hard-to-reach gunk in under a minute. Therefore, we're very happy with this thing. There's also a smaller brush that's designed to clean the drinking tube on the water bottle. The humans had trouble making it fit in our water bottles' drinking tube.

For making our humans' lives easier, thereby saving our delicate ears from human grumbling and cursing, we're going to give All Living Things Bottle Brush 5/5 stars!

Valentine's Day 2016

From: Buffy and Broccoli
To: Our loyal readers

Happy Valentine's Day! (Broccoli, you're facing the wrong way! Turn around! Darn it...)

(Note: The chocolates behind us are for display purposes only. Don't feed chocolate to your guinea pigs!)

Another Buffy Update

Hi there, readers! Some of you are probably wondering how I'm doing since I got the bad news a few months ago about a uterine mass that's most likely cancer. The good news is that the medicine and Critical Care are still working to keep my weight up, and keep me in good spirits.

Why are you interrupting me while I'm eating pellets? Do you have something even better for me to eat? Carrots, perhaps?

The bad news is that I recently went to the vet, and the uterine mass is getting worse:

That's not good.

So things aren't looking great long-term, but I'm still feeling good in the short-term. Keep those positive thoughts coming.

Vitamin C for Guinea Pigs Supplement Quality

Here at Cavy Savvy, we are big on quality for everything we put into our bodies. We have already talked about the quality of our pellets, and the quality of our water. Today we want to talk about the quality of our vitamin c supplements.

As we've previously mentioned, adult guinea pigs need 10-30 mg of Vitamin C per kilogram of body weight per day, and we generally like taking our vitamin C. Although some claim that guinea pigs can get enough vitamin c through diet alone, giving us a vitamin c supplement can help ensure that we're getting enough.

Keep in mind the dosage of 10-30 mg of vitamin C per kilogram of body weight (we generally weigh around 1 kg, unless you have happen to have a cuy). You can go a little over this (our vet recommend 40 ml once daily for adult guinea pigs on one of out vitamin C supplements), but don't go too far over or we could develop a condition called pseudo-scurvy. It's easier to be precise with liquid vitamin C, but if your guinea pig prefers a tablet, you can cut a 100 mg tablet into quarters for 25 mg portions.

Assuming you've been able to find a type of supplement your guinea pig will take (liquid or tablet), and you know the correct dosage (might want to check with your vet to be sure on this one), how do you know you're providing a quality supplement? It's important to know that dietary supplements are not regulated like drugs are, and there have been a lot of quality issues found with them. Some of the worst cases involve adulterated supplements containing actual drugs like amphetamines. We haven't found cases of vitamin C being adulterated with drugs like this, but one study found that 27% of vitamin C didn't meet their label claims, containing either more or less than is listed.

Fortunately, there are organizations that can help you identify quality supplements:

• The United States Pharmacopeia (USP) has a dietary supplement verification program. You can find the USP seal on many supplements from Nature Made and Kirkland, for example (see their website for a complete list). The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia considers USP to be the "gold standard" when it comes to supplement quality, so you should look for this one first. If you can't find it, there are others you can consider.
• NSF International also does dietary supplement product testing, and lets companies put their quality seal on the bottle if they pass.
• ConsumerLab.com tests dietary supplements purchased off the shelf and allows you to see the results for a fee. This includes many vitamin c brands.
• LabDoor.com provides a similar service, where they test supplements off the shelf and put the results up on their website. They let you see more information for free, though. This includes vitamin C brands.