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PETS | Small animal special
http://www.petsmagazine.com.au
flower beds and footpaths. Weeds can’t seed
from inside a cavy, so you can recycle them
through your pet — which is easy enough if
you’ve got a garden.Hilarity
Guinea pigs may be small but some have big
personalities. “They are always up for whatever
you want to do,” Nikki says. “They know your
footsteps and will come up to the side of the
cage to talk to you — they even know your
car’s engine and will start wheeking when
you arrive home.”
Nikki says she had a tortie-and-white boar
that would get very affronted if other pigs
were fed before him and he’d make his feelings
known — loud and long. “He also objected
when I ate a baked potato at an agricultural
show before he was fed. Another time, I fed
the Netherland Dwarf rabbit in the cage below
a large cage of Coronet sows, only to look up
and get a very hard stare from two of them,
as if to say, ‘How dare you feed a mere rabbit
before us. Rabbits are second-class citizens.
You feed us first’.”
Pets with teen attitude. You have to
love that.Another way to stimulate your nose-twitching
buddy is to use PVC pipes as tunnels, which
they like to run through.
“Toilet rolls stuff ed with hay are good as they
have to work at them to get the hay. Also good
are those treats you can get from pet shops like
a parsley roll, bowl with dried apple in it or a
kebab [stick], which you thread with veg that
they can reach up and chew,” Nikki says.
For cuddle time, there are “piggy pouches” you
can put your pig in to carry around, either to sit
outside on your lap or inside to watch TV. “One
pig I knew was a huge Doctor Who fan; if he heard
the theme music, he’d squeak until he was taken
in to watch it with the family,” Nikki recalls.Housekeeping
Nobody likes to talk about toilet business, but
an interesting fact is that the guinea pig’s by-
product makes very good manure; soil treated
with cavy manure holds four times as much
water as any other soil.
Nikki says nothing goes to waste in the
kitchen either as excess uncooked vegetables
can be given to them and will be gratefully
received. Guinea pigs can also help out in
the garden, keeping pesky weeds out of yourThere are many diff erent breeds
of guinea pig — some requiring
more work than others.