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.

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:

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!

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!

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.

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:

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.

And then we had a surprise hatching of a lone duckie last month:

Munchkin and Gnome did their best to do Duckie Parenting and placed lone duckie in the guinea pig crèche:

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:

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!!