Who's This Little Guy?

Why, it's Poko, looking positively dashing in his new cape! As you may remember, Poko was one of the three winners of our last giveaway, which was to celebrate reaching over 100 followers! You never know when we'll have another contest, so be sure to become a follower of Cavy Savvy by clicking the "Join This Site" button over on the right side of the page. That way, you'll be the first to know when we hold our next giveaway!

How Much Does It Cost To Take A Guinea Pig To The Vet?

In the past, we've talked a little bit about how much it costs when you need to take your guinea pig to the vet. Regarding Broccoli's neutering, we said: "The total cost of the process was the vet visit ($77) plus the neutering ($320) plus the Oxbow Critical Care ($14). The vet threw in the cost for the Meloxicam pain killer for free (would have been $20)." We also mentioned that the humans had to pay $65 for a phone consultation with the ASPCA after Lola ate a lily that she shouldn't have eaten.

We wanted to list some of the other things the vet has charged our humans for so you know how much it costs to take care of a guinea pig. Note that these prices are what we've paid over the course of about 4 years for 4 different guinea pigs. On average, healthy pigs only need an EXAM and a couple of NAIL TRIMS every year.

Basic Exam:
* Exam/Consultations - $77

Exam costs for treating Broccoli, the feral guinea pig
* Fecal Float (that is, checking for parasites in our poop) - $24
* Neutering (only needed so that he could live with us girls) - $320
* Oxbow Critical Care (needed to offset the loss of appetite due to the painkiller) - $14

Grooming:
* Sanitary Clip (in other words, a haircut. Only Buffy needs this because she is a long-haired texel) - $18
* Nail trim - $18
* Wound treatment, small - $36 (this ended up being free because the vet accidentally clipped Lola's nail too short)
* Meloxicam 5mg/ml inject - $30.70 (this was also free to treat Lola's too-short nail)
* Meloxicam 1.5mg/ml - $18 (again, free and used to prevent infection and pain to Lola's nail)

Charges for end-of-life care:
* Hospitalize Initial Day - $35
* Fluids SQ Medium - $25
* Digital Radiography: 2 views SM - $185 (for diagnosis of a massive bladder stone)
* Euthanasia Medium - $42 (poor Annie... we miss you!)

So, as you can see, our vet bills aren't cheap. Before you bring a guinea pig home, make sure you can afford to care for us.

I'm totally worth it!

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Wheatgrass?

A reader recently suggested we try grass, so we've been begging the humans to get us some. It seems like an easy thing to get since there's grass on lawns, parks, and so forth, but you want to make sure you give us untreated grass. Instead, the humans bought us some Pet Greens Live Pet Grass from the pet store:

Ahh! Scary creature on the grass!

Yum!

The wheatgrass was really good, although we did get a bored at the end and leave a little on the plate. 4.5/5 stars!

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Red Lettuce?

We have recently realized that despite reviewing a lot of foods, we haven't reviewed many types of lettuce. In fact, there has been only one lettuce review, so we think it's time for more. Red lettuce, like romaine lettuce, can be fed to us almost daily.

Munch, munch, munch...

Yum!

Red lettuce is not only crisp and delicious, but adds a fun splash of color to the mix. You may think we don't notice things like this when we devour food as fast as we can, but we do. We just don't stop to admire it because that wastes valuable eating time. 5/5 stars!

Capes For Our Cavy Contest Winners

Congratulations to our winners! Your sparkily cavy capes are being mailed out today.

If you didn't win this time, "follow" this blog using the button on the right and keep reading for a chance to enter and win in our next contest!

Product Review: F.M.Brown's Extreme Natural Treats, Wheat Sprays

When we eat hay, our favorite part is the seed-heads. Some smart human must have seen their piggy eating the seed heads as enthusiastically as we do, and decided that having really big seed heads would make for a great treat.

Brilliant!

A cool feature of these treats is that they come with a plastic clip to hold the wheat in place. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to fit all cage types, and it turned out to be really easy to knock off.

I was the first one to try them. 

The clip came off!

Oh no! Lola finally figured out that they're good! Now she'll start stealing my food again.

Broccoli was the last one to figure out that these treats are good, and didn't eat any until there was only a couple left. Since we had trouble figuring out that they're edible and the clip had some problems, we'll give  Extreme Natural Treats, Wheat Sprays 4 out of 5 stars.

Guinea Pig Interview

Ever wonder what's on your guinea pig's mind? Check out this interview!