Guinea Pig World Records, Part 2

Last year, we posted about some interesting guinea pig world records, including the oldest guinea pig, the longest jumper, the highest jumper, and the fastest runner. It looks like another guinea pig world record may be on the verge of being set:

This is Ginger. She might be famous soon! (image source: Union Leader)

Ginger is a guinea pig who lives with her human, Briana Drouin, in Hooksett, NH. Just this month, Ginger gave birth to 10 baby piggies at Northside Animal Hospital. While 2 of the 10 were stillborn, the other 8 are alive and thriving so far. Their names are: Bean, Coffee, Ginger Jr., Peanut, Almond, Coco, Chocolate and Brownie Jr. Ginger's human Briana was quite surprised, as she was told to expect about 3 baby guinea pigs.

Briana thinks that Ginger may have broken the world record for the largest litter of guinea pigs. The previous she record she found was 9 baby guinea pigs, set in 1992 in Australia. Guinness is investigating, and it will probably take them a few weeks to verify if this is a new record or not.

If you live close to NH, be aware that Briana will be putting them up for adoption. It could be a chance to take home an adorable piece of guinea pig history!

Guinea Pig Molar Trims and Malocclusion

Broccoli here, everyone. I've got to tell you all about the latest chapter in my ongoing dental problems. The humans recently noticed that when I eat, I would occasionally open my mouth very widely and tilt my head. That, along with a 50 gram weight loss, led them to take me to the veterinarian to get checked out.

Give it to me straight, doc. Will I be able to continue chewing on things normally?

The veterinarian said I needed a molar trim. Guinea pig teeth are constantly growing, and we need to wear them down by eating consistently. If the teeth start getting too long, that makes it harder to eat, which means they get less worn down and grow even longer. It's a nasty cycle that can get worse and worse if left untreated. Fortunately, our cavy savvy humans know that regular weigh ins are the best way to detect problems, and seeing a minor but consistent weight loss made them more vigilant for other issues.

The technical term for overgrown teeth is malocclusion. Guinea Lynx gives the following malocclusion warning signs checklist:

• Does your guinea pig seem to work at chewing like he has something caught in his mouth that he or she is trying to unstick?
• Is there exaggerated ear movement when he chews?
• Is there discharge from the eyes or nose (can indicate an abscess)?
• Does he seem to chew to one side?
• Are the front teeth even and lined up?
• Does he eat at the same rate/speed the other pigs eat at?
• Can he rip and tear?
• Can he eat the peel as well as the apple from an apple slice?
• Does he chew (carrots in particular) and let little pieces drop out of his mouth?
• Does he pick up a pellet in his mouth and let it drop out again?
• Does he show great interest in food, yet not eat?
• Is he steadily losing weight?
• Is he drooling?

If your guinea pig shows these warning signs, make sure you take them to the vet as soon as possible to get checked out. After my molar trim, I'm back to eating normally, and feeling good!

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Alcosa Cabbage?

Happy (belated) new years, loyal readers! Who's ready for another fun year of food and product reviews, and other guinea pig fun? Presumably you are, if you're still reading this, and we love that you are! Let's kick off 2017 with a new food review, shall we?

After doing the blog for so many years, it's been getting harder and harder to find foods that we haven't review yet that we know are okay for guinea pigs to eat. There were times we worried that we'd have to retire our food reviews because we've simply eaten everything we can in the produce section at the grocery store. Fortunately, the human are subscribed to Blue Apron, which sometimes provides unusual types of produce we've never heard of. (For example, see our review of Atlas Carrots.) Recently, the humans got an "Alcosa Cabbage" from them, which is another new one to us. We looked it up, and it turns out it's a type of savoy cabbage. This means we can have it 2-4 times per week, but only in small portions because it's a gassy food.

New food!

I'll take this row, and you take the other row. Deal?

Hey, who gets the middle row?

We couldn't reach an agreement on who got the middle row, and it turned out to be a free-for-all. It was a little chaotic, but we each got our fair share of cabbage in the end. Wish the humans would give us more, but we know we got a fairly generous portion as-is, and we can't eat too much cabbage at once. Oh well.

Alcosa Cabbage gets 5/5 stars!

Automatic Pet Feeder using Arduino

We've had several posts in the past talking about various issues related to humans needing to travel. Examples: Should you try to fly with your human? Should you take a car trip with your human? Should your human leave you at home and try to find someone to take care of you? For those humans who are only going on a short trip and have strong technical skills, we have another option to share with you involving using an Arduino to feed us.

For those who have never heard of it, Arduino is: "Open-source electronic prototyping platform enabling users to create interactive electronic objects." People have put them to use on cool projects such as security cameras, "smart canes" for the blind, fingerprint scanning garage door openers, and hacking talking teddy bears to make them say what you want. It was only a matter of time before an enterprising guinea pig owner put this technology to work for us!

For more details, see here: "Arduino - Guinea Pig automatic food and water dispenser by Studvio."

Our humans have experimented a little with a similar device called a Raspberry Pi, but making something like this is a bit beyond them for now. If any of our readers actually have made something like this, let us know in the comments section!

(Again, we want to emphasize that this should only be used for very short trips. You wouldn't want to risk your guinea pig going without food for too long if the power goes out or the device malfunctions! In fact, we'd probably recommend that if you're going to rely on something like this, you may also want to set up a webcam to monitor the guinea pig cage for these sorts of emergencies.)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All Our Piggie Friends!

Happy holidays, everyone! Thank you for being loyal readers following all our piggie adventures, and sharing your adventures with us in the comments section.

We hope you and your families (both furry and human) enjoy the holiday season and have a fabulous 2017!

Cavy Savvy 500th Post Celebration!

Guess what, loyal readers? This post is our 500th Cavy Savvy post! That's a whole lot of food reviews, product reviews, questions answered, and other guinea pig information. We like to commemorate milestones like this, but it's a little bittersweet this time since the blog founders Lola (1) and Buffy aren't with us to celebrate this time around. But I'm sure they're still avidly reading our latest posts from the Rainbow Bridge, happy to see that what they built still endures.

Time to celebrate!

Looks like romaine lettuce, apple, and orange pepper!

I claim the orange pepper!

Hey Lola... We did it! 500 posts!

Here's to hundreds more!

Can guinea pigs eat red carrots?

Long-time readers of this blog may know that carrots come in colors other than just orange, including white and and purple. To get in the Christmas mood, we're reviewing a food that's Christmas-colored: red carrots. This particular variety is known as "nutri-red," and it is known to be very high in lycopene, an antioxidant found in tomatoes and known to have heath benefits for humans. Red carrots are originally from India and China.

Like all carrots, you can feed us the equivalent of one baby carrot per day.

They're not super red. More like a reddish-orange.

But they sure taste like carrots!

Mmm... Carrots!

We have yet to meet a carrot that we didn't love! Red carrots get 5/5 stars!