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!!
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!!
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!!
Hello, everyone, here’s an update on our surprise lone duckie that came out of a failed incubator project (because the cat sat on the incubator!). Yes, I know, the pitfalls of having animals on a farm!!
Duckie!!
Just to give you a quick background on our duckies, of the mallard type, we had to incubate the eggs because these ducks refused to set. Aha…you might say (if you know anything about the duckie world)…Why didn’t you use the local broody ducks (of the Muscovy type) to set? And, Aha once again…the pitfalls of having animals on the farm…we have a dog with a ferocious appetite for muscovy ducks!
Anyway, to get to the point: we have, in the past, incubated duck eggs with success. However, we found ourselves somewhat at a loss in being duckie parents. We were inexperienced, young and ignorant of The Way of The Duckie Dabble. The result was a bunch of useless duckies waiting for corn mash at the end of each day with no knowledge of eating the good things in life like slugs, caterpillars, ants, creepy crawlies and grass. What a disaster!!
Anyway, we have spent many a day observing The Way of The Duckie Dabble and this is the All New Munchkin & Gnome Classical Duckie Education.
It’s important to keep duckie in a safe, warm environment where he can freely survey the outside world. We used a fish tank with a 100 watt bulb.
Warm Secure Environment.
2. Spend lots and lots of quality time with duckie. At Day 2, Start him on a diet of protein (we used boiled eggs) and lots of chopped greens. Let him splash about in a bowl of water like a duckie.
Splashing Duckie.
3. From Day 3, allow supervised walks so he gets used to pecking at creepy crawlies and eating green things. According to Gnome, it helps to wear yellow wellies so that he thinks you are just one of his kind!
Supervised Duckie Walks.Wear Yellow Wellies.
4. Introduce Duckie to other farm members in a controlled manner:
Meet the Cat.
5. It is of utmost importance in a Duckie Classical Education to introduce other animals (or cultures) into his everyday world as quickly as possible. From Day 7, take Duckie to the Piggie Creche (9am to 5pm) for pre-school education. This will enable fluency in a foreign language at a young age.
We have a Baby!! Yes, against all odds we have a baby duckie! We haven’t had much luck with the duckie breeding program because of gender issues (this is true, by the way, the male duck paired up with a male goose and wouldn’t have anything to do with the female ducks). Anyway, we have a new drake on the block that is satisfying the harem of ducks. However, none of the ducks wanted to set so Gnome made an incubator.
We put 12 eggs in the incubator (Gnome-rigged, of course with temperature control) last month and eagerly waited. Gnome candled them at the beginning and all of them seemed to be viable. Towards the end of the incubation period (takes 28 days to hatch), disaster struck when we realised that the cat had been jumping on top of the incubator because it was such a comfy warm spot, causing the temperature to fluctuate, subsequently spoiling the eggs. We were so disappointed and gave up on the project as an “act of cat.” However, there was one egg we had put in 5 days later than the rest which was due to hatch today…we woke up this morning to:
“…peep….peep…peep.”
Yes, we have one lone duckie! Awwwhhhh….soooooo cute….
New Baby Duckie!
Another baby picture:
Duckie!!
We have set up an emergency brooding area in a fish tank with a 100 watt lamp to keep it warm. He’s just had his first feed and seems to be doing okay! A bit lonely but we are keeping it company…
We just delivered a fresh batch of Lime Sulphur XXX Pet Dip For Mange, Fleas, Ticks and Ringworm (wow…what a looooong name). The guys at the Farm Store in Punta Gorda just call it Presidente (the name of beer from which we have recycled the bottle)…for Pets. Brian, the manager at the Farm Store tells us that the Pet Dip is very popular.
Mr. Brian Cho at The Farm Store.
Later on I spoke with Gnome and discussed the possible reasons for the popularity of this particular product.
Munchkin: “Hmmmm, Maybe it’s because we use recycled bottles.”
or
“Maybe it’s the Triple XXX on the label…makes it look really serious.”
or
“Maybe it’s because people imagine two doctors in the bush, stirring over a cauldron of sulphur pet dip, and think it’s really cool imagery….”
Gnome, of course had a reply:
“Maybe it’s because it actually does what it says on the label.”
Oh. Selling something that actually works. What good marketing strategy!
Checkout this product in The Apothecary or check it out at The Farm Store in Punta Gorda, Belize.
