We are nearly done with the Guinea Pig Parade!! So, Friday’s Child is Loving and Giving.
Just to mix things up a bit, we have a non-piggie as Friday’s Child.
This little duckie has given us a lot of joy over the last few weeks. Yes, he has imprinted on us since we ended up raising him from day 1. However, he still a very well adapted duckie, passing all duckie milestones perfectly. He is starting to feather, dabble in mud and quack like a duck (instead of the peep-peeping noise). As Gnome says,
Thursday’s Child has Far to Go. This is our little runty of the litter; below 3rd centile for head circumference, body weight and length. For babies it is vital to get the first feed within the first 24 hours to get the colostrum. Once they get this, they are usually bouncing around by 48 hours, eating grass, grains and anything it can get its mitts on. Getting the first feed can actually be a problem with multiple pregnancies (which is common amongst the cavies) especially when female piggies only have one set of teats. The smaller, less aggressive babies can get ignored and fall by the wayside. When we see this happening, we sometimes give them a boost by hand-feeding them with cow’s milk on the first day. It is important to note that baby guinea pigs do not have a good swallow reflex so you can’t actually syringe feed them; rather, you have to hold a teaspoon in front of them so that they can lick up the milk.
This one has managed with a little bit of help from us. She was one of four and wasn’t getting enough milk. See…she’s fit and healthy now…looks like a little white rat with no tail!
Yes I know that you are all waiting with baited breath for the Wednesday Piggie!! Wednesday’s Child is Full of Woe. I wanted to change this line to “Wednesday’s Child is Full of Soul” but then realised that I shouldn’t avoid the sad “Eeyore” archetype. They are everywhere so it would only be natural to have a statistically equal representation of the general population.
Sad Piggie!
Gnome Comment:
“Keep 20 to 30 guinea pigs at a time and you will learn the secrets of human behaviour; a skill that is essential to every doctor out there.”
Tuesday’s Child is Full of Grace. I deliberately picked one out that looked like a little highland cow. This one sat and posed like he knew that he had to give it his best. They all have different personalities and some of them can’t stay still and get very jittery. The mothers are all doing fine and doing what guinea pig mothers do.
We’ve got 7 new kids on the block lined up as calendar kids for the whole week. Whoopeee…I hear you all shout…what fun!! Just had 7 new guinea pigs in the last week from 3 mothers. First baby checks done; all fit and healthy!!
So we continue with The Chinese New Year celebrations. Yes, it can keep on going for about two weeks…yay!! To honour the new year, Gnome gave me a brand new wheelbarrow. Oooooh….and it’s red too so very, very auspicious. This is a big deal for me because I’ve been using this wheelbarrow for years when it should have been thrown out years ago.
Old Wheelbarrow.
Brand New Lucky Wheelbarrow:
New Wheelbarrow.
Great, so now I can use this to cart veggies and greens from our new mini garden. We’ve set this up for the dry season since we don’t have huge resources to irrigate over this period of time. In years past, we’ve usually eaten chaya, which is drought resistant.
Chaya.
But of course, variety is the spice of life!! Now we have endives, rocket, bok choi, parsley, Krim tomatoes, bitter gourd, horseradish, eggplant and jalapeños. All set to load onto my wheelbarrow for Munchkin yummies!! All Aboard The Munchkin Express!!
Hello and Happy Chinese New Year to y’all!! It’s the Year of the Rooster by the way, which means action, taking the chance and getting things done properly. Probably means other things too so best if you go read it up yourself…I don’t claim to be a Horoscope Munchkin. Today has been an auspicious day for us on the farm. Look!! We have 8 (Auspicious Number for Chinese) eggs to incubate. Last night we followed the duckies around, nonchalantly of course, and found their secret nest.
Yes, my evolved duckies, we know you’re hiding something from us:
Secret Duckie Nest in Bush:
Secret Egg Site.
We found 6 eggs last night and then 2 this morning. Lucky 8!! Try this number for Boledo today!!
Hello, Munchkin here again! We had a terrible week of heavy rains and now it’s starting to get drier. I shouldn’t complain but I will! I’ve been having an awful time trying to get things done on the farm because it is sooooo wet. I just end up getting covered in water, mud, dirt and feeling sorry for myself. The other day, I thought of a mantra to keep myself going and it went like this: “I am a store-house of creativity….I am a store-house of creativity….I am a store-house of creativity.” Ha-Ha, I need to laugh at myself now because when I actually write it down, it sounds like a repetitive loop which totally lacks lustre and inventiveness!
Anyway, yesterday, whilst walking around on the farm, caked in wetness and dirt, I wasn’t exactly feeling great. Instead of the mantra, I was wailing and flailing with occasional huffing and puffing!! Gnome hid behind a tree nearby and stuck his yellow welly out at me and said cheekily:
“Munchkin!! Are you a store-house of creativity??!!”
He guffawed and laughed at my mantra whilst shaking about in a little dance. His yellow wellies were flailing up in the air…dare I say…like River Dance. It was such a stupid sight that I did have to laugh and that snapped me out of my dourness. So, I did get stuff done (happily) in the end…
Transplanted the tomato plants:
Tomato Seedlings.
Cleaned the Pigtail buckets…I get these from town and they start piling up under the house until I get fed up and do a huge wash up.
Pigtail Bucket.
Did the laundry in the Gnomified washing machine:
Spent some quality time with the little creatures on the farm. Whilst doing all that, I forgot about repeating the mantra and just got on with it. Better when the brain doesn’t get in the way sometimes!!
The beginnings were delicate times when we first set about procuring our first generation of guinea pigs. We were looking for new blood, so-to-speak, and made a long and arduous journey crossing borders by sea and by road, to gain our progeny. Our first piggies were only about 12 weeks old; a long-haired tawny brown called “The Kid,” a blonde girlie named “Honey” and of course, the Grandmother of all our Piggies: Vanessa aka Stumpy. Vanessa suffered a fracture of her tibia during the transportation and had a successful below knee amputation once she reached the safe house. Lovely Grandma Stumpy out-lived the other two original piggies and went on to produce generations for us. She lived a very good life and died a couple of years ago; Grandma Stumpy you will always live on in our memories.
GrandMa Stumpy.
The original concept of guinea pig rearing was for food. We had seen some rather tempting Peruvian guinea pig dishes (mostly fried in batter like fried chicken) and thought that they might be rather tasty. The first houses were coined “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon” because they were wire cages suspended from rafters. A few generations of piggies started in this first construction but it finally had to discarded after doggy sabotage. The dog would spring up from her hind legs and attempt to break the bottom of the cages with her teeth. She was eventually successful and had a feast with quite a few of them.
Meanwhile, we attempted also to sample the fine epicurean delights of guinea pig. This is Piggies Cooked in Mead:
Three Piggies Cooking in Mead.
I have written on the finer points of cleaning guinea pig carcass in previous posts so I won’t go into the detail. They are actually quite bony so actually provide a good skin for stuffing….in this case, these piggies were stuffed with marinated pork meat. Anyway, it did taste good but it was a lot of hard work. Besides, we didn’t feel quite right about eating our cute and cuddly pets. They looked so harmless and helpless…yes, we felt like such awful predators!
Cheery Guinea Pig.
After some philosophical talks and drinking of mead, we decided that the eating of piggies did not sit right for us. So what to do with them? We feel that everything on our farm should have a purpose.
For some time, we used them like cows and put them on a movable cage so that we could have sections of grass mowed naturally. There was an upstairs and ramps to go downstairs to eat grass. Gnome’s idea of course!
Guinea Pig Mower.
This was dubbed the gated community of “Paradise Pastures” and lasted quite a while. The cage was rather heavy so proved quite a chore to move. But alas, we hit a snag with the dog….there is a whole story with this one. Anyway, the dog dug a hole in the ground and managed to get her paws into the cage!
Okay, then we had to re-model the cage with security features: we decided on a condo type resort thing with majestic hilltop views but no access to the bottom.
Piggie Condos.
There was a lot of unhappiness, squeaking and squawking and general mayhem with the new changes. The piggies couldn’t find a purpose on the farm. We even set up a dance/yoga studio for them with there own teacher:
Johnny Daybreeze.
Nah…that didn’t work either. Finally….and this is where they are now…they have been placed with the Zazen Duckies in the Zen Garden.
Piggies in Zen Garden.
And then we had a surprise hatching of a lone duckie last month:
Duckie!!
Munchkin and Gnome did their best to do Duckie Parenting and placed lone duckie in the guinea pig crèche:
Duckie and Piggies.
It has worked out so well. Duckie house-cleans for the piggies by eating up the grubs and creepy crawlies and learns to eat greens with them. They are all friends and get along very well. Duckie is getting bigger with the house cleaning:
Duckie Growing Up!
So, because of the success of this pilot project we have decided to incorporate the piggies into the cycle of duckling rearing. This is because our mallard ducks are not good mothers (very scatty, forgetful and silly…no, I mean that they are usually too busy meditating!). The piggies have a new purpose on the farm now!!
It’s been a good start to the new year because the weather has been dry and sunny (except for today, of course, there are rain clouds and it feels like it wants to rain). Anyway, with the good weather, we felt uplifted and ready to start the new year full of energy and enthusiasm. Well, it started off with Gnome fixing the washing machine! Yay, we have clean clothes now!! I’ve been doing a big spring clean inside the house and throwing all sorts of kipple and the like. It’s a lovely feeling dumping things and making a great big fire…whoopeeeeee!!
Kipple…stuff…just multiplies!!
Kipple
Anyway, Gnome has been doing some manly, physical work (so, I’ve been very nice to him…bringing out cool lemonade and dainty egg sandwiches to keep him going). He is setting up the platforms for our water tanks. This time we will be ready for the dry season and we won’t be caught out. We will have our tanks lined up to catch the rains from now to April.
Water Security!!
Water Tank.
And as usual the farm has been producing so there is the usual Munchkin harvesting….
These are Monkey Cap; the taste like peanut butter and have the consistency of peanut butter. They are nice but kinda get stuck in your teeth because they are gummy-like. Don’t eat them when you have guests around or you’ll get into a right old mess with orange gums and teeth…Ha-Ha! I wasn’t trying to put you off this fruit by the way!
Monkey Cap.
We hope that the year is starting off well for y’all out there!!
