Lily…

On 17 August 2011 Lovely Lily went to be a star on Planet Guinea, or maybe on Planet Lily, who knows, she spent most of her time in her own little universe so is probably in a sub-universe of her own now :)She’s the white one, dusty in parts, doing her own thing and occasionaly bumping into the other Stars, much to their disgust.

Lily arrived here because she was deemed unsuitable to sell as a pet shop pig and was due to be returned to her wholesaler 🙁 A wonderful Human rescued her and she found her way here and was, I thought, going to be quite a learning curve. Lily had a dentition all of her own, met first by her 3 Incisors on going further into her mouth you were met with Lily Landscape of teeth some of which would just fall out at any given time for seemingly no reason… Lily was also obviously blind, her eyes were very small, almost non existent, as well as this she was deaf, watching her sit by the open window in a recent thunderstorm when all the others were huddled over the far side of the pen (other side of shed!) brought a smile to my face, Lily was nasal gazing out of the window probably enjoying the smell of the rain 🙂 Similarly sudden noises were no problem, unless the others were nearby and ran, sometimes she would join them and try to follow suit 🙂 Lily lived here for 21 months, she was about 2 1/2 when she left us, no age at all, quality not quantity.

Lily lived with her 8 friends, 7 sows and a castrated boar, after about 3 months of feeding her grated food separately from the others and soaking her pellets I decided to see how she could fare without the extra attention- I caught her biting into a piece of carrot, something I didn’t think she could do! So I left her teeth, didn’t file or trim them and monitored her eating closely. She preferred the high energy foodstuffs such as carrots, sweetcorn, apple and dry food (mix or pellets); no hay to speak of maybe some Just Grass but loved fresh grass! Lily was even able to graze grass, after a fashion. It has been very noticeable since her depature that the dry food dish ( a flat one that she would eventually end up sitting in) has gone down a lot less, for the last 2 days it has hardly been touched whereas once lLily had eaten her fill of fresh food she would move to the dry food dish and sit and eat before choosing a place to sleep. Although Lily seemed to be quite a distant guinea when it came to mixing with the others Emi and Sienna were her eye washers and would frequently steal her food, Lily was treated as any other guinea pig, no allowances made.

Lily came to 2 Piggy PMs and stole the show for sure at the last one, as well as Chrissie’s, of Gorgeous Guineas, banana. Lily had a very good sense of smell and her nasal gazing went into action as soon as the airwaves carrying banana reached her little nose! She trialled the new Recovery Plus that was kindly donated to the Piggy PM by Supreme, favouring it to another well known brand, possibly and probably because of the higher Protein content. Supreme kindly sent her some sachets afterwards and she would “put away” almost a complete sachet at one sitting first thing in the morning 🙂 Lily enjoyed Supreme Science Selective which has a hole in the centre unfortunately and got caught around her single Incisor so she needed watching while eating that as unfortunately every nugget got caught.

Lily 2010

Lily 2010

Lily took me on a learning curve so high it would’ve been scary to look down, she taught me that for her, natural occlusion was right and acceptable. Her teeth looked a mess but she was able to eat normally and live her own little life, not being syringe fed or having dental work done too often (though her teeth needed monitoring for overgrowth or curving inwards). The others reaction to her said that Lily was just different and not disabled, she could do more than manage she could her little life to the full with them and be treated as the others were. Seeing corn on the cob and bananas will always remind me of Lily, I need to get used to not waking her from deep slumber up in the mornings by tapping her Fiddlestix only for her to go crazy and make that silent wheek where it’s all effort and not sound 🙂 Not seeing her with her back to me looking through the opposite wall of the pen because she can sense the others excitement but isn’t quite sure where its at 🙂


Karen, missing the wonderful whiteness that was Lily

Enjoying carrot

High energy food, yum 🙂

Summer 2010

Summer 2010

Piggy PM number 7

Enjoying Supreme Recovery Plus at Piggy PM 7

Hay for Lily was to sleep in not eat

With Mr Fantastic

With Mr. Fantastic

Landscape a la Lily 😀

No rest for Lily! Sienna on eyewash duty