The Guinea Pig Secret Santa Project

Philanthropy and Guinea Pigs

Out in the big wide world, there are amazing people who dedicate their lives to rescuing and helping abandoned, surrendered, sick guinea pigs. Some are registered charities, some are simply kind-hearted people working, fundraising and donating for guinea pigs..

Whilst the idea that every single day guinea pigs find themselves needing rescue baffles and saddens me, knowing that there are safe places for these beautiful, gentle creatures, where they can be rehabilitated, shown love and kindness, and hopefully found a new caring forever home makes the situation a little better.

I already support Sarnia Guinea Pig Rescue on the beautiful island of Guernsey. I save stamps, send donations, and you can also find items they really need on their Amazon Wishlist. I also follow many other rescues on Facebook, YouTube  and Twitter, sharing their stories, advice and videos on my own social media. Lots of people will offer support by volunteering at their local rescue or sanctuary, they will take in foster piggies at their own home, they will do fundraising events and donate the proceeds. All these are wonderful ways to get involved. Then a few months ago I stumbled upon The Guinea Pig Secret Santa Project.

The Guinea Pig Secret Santa Project - What is it?

This is a fantastic group of volunteers who coordinate a worldwide scheme to send gift parcels to specific guinea pigs living in rescue.

Rescues send in information about piggies, often long-term residents, who they would like to receive gifts for. They provide a wishlist, photos and details of the single, pair, trio etc of piggies to the team at TGPSSP. Meanwhile, potential Secret Santas register their interest in taking part, how many piggies they would like to send gifts to and where they live (roughly, I gave the country and county where I live in my initial contact DM). If you're under 18 your are going to want to do this with a parent or guardian.

The process of pairing the piggies with their Santas takes time and a lot of work, as the team look at a lot of information, including where you are located and if you were a Santa on a previous year, they will try and match you with a different rescue this time around.

What can you send?

You can send as much or as little as you like, TGPSSP suggest a shoebox sized parcel but that's is purely a guideline.

While you are waiting to receive your match and their wishlist, you can start shopping for some rescue essentials, such as:

• Rubber gloves
• Syringes
• Anti-bacterial surface wipes
• Lint-free cotton wool pads
• Choccies for the Rescue team (not the piggies - it's poisonous!)

Your Rescue's wishlist is likely to contain more specific items, like:

• Oxbow Critical Care feed
• Timothy hay
• Natural treats
• a particular brand of food that they use
• particular brands of skin care products
• tunnels and hidies

My parcel included a range of these items, plus a large water bottle, and some products from Gorgeous Guineas. Gorgeous Guineas do a lot of different, all-natural skin care products, designed and created specifically for Guinea Pigs, but try to think what a Rescue or Sanctuary might need the most when you place your order. I chose:

• Lice and Easy shampoo - because surrendered piggies are likely to bring little friends with them!
• CocoNeem Melt - has a coconut oil base, and is used as a treatment prior to shampooing to help relieve scurf and crusty areas of skin.
• Calendula Lotion - which is suitable for using on pregnant piggies and Skinny Pigs (hairless), and is great for soothing sore, itchy and dry skin. Rescues see lots of pregnant sows surrendered to them every year.

NB: Check how you are going to send/deliver your gift, as some carriers cannot take parcels containing liquid.

Also NB: Before you buy any fleece/fabric tunnels, hidies and accessories for your parcel, wait until you receive your wishlist, as many rescues don't have the facilities or time to wash and dry these items, and might prefer, wooden, plastic or cardboard items instead.

I was teamed up with April Lodge Guinea Pig Rescue, and my final 'surprise' gift to them was a pencil portrait of my two Secret Santa recipients, Gonzo and his wife Busy Bee. I wanted to include something very personal in the parcel, and the photo I received of them was so beautiful that I used it to hand draw them onto watercolour paper. I popped it in a board backed envelope and put it in the parcel with everything else.

Pencil Portrait of April Lodge Guinea Pig Rescue residents Gonzo and Busy Bee.
Drawn by Rebecca Reynolds BA (Hons)
aka Pumpkin Becki

Sadly Gonzo passed away just before Christmas, but Busy Bee received her gifts safely, and generously gave her portrait to the kind lady who had fostered her and Gonzo for a time.


If you would like to take part in upcoming Guinea Pig Secret Santas, then pop over to their Facebook page and give them a follow https://www.facebook.com/guineapigsecretsanta/
Sleep tight little Gonzo xx

Introducing my family - part 4

The Chickens aka The Lady Detectives, or The Blob Blobs

Preparing for chickens

MrPB and I have wanted to have hens since we first watched the 1998 Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall tv series Escape to River Cottage. We didn't have the right kind of garden way back then, but we began investigating.

Our honeymoon destination in May 2001 was chosen specifically because the Dorset cottage had it's own trio of hens which you could collect eggs from everyday. They were a bit sad looking, one had a very pecked, bald bottom, and the run, although large, was just mud and nettles. Oh my, they were so much fun to talk to and watch.

We bought a couple of books via Amazon; Keeping a Few Hens in Your Garden and Keeping a Few Ducks in Your Garden, both written by the doyenne of poultry Francine Raymond. The latter book put the idea of ducks out of our minds entirely! If you're thinking about them then do read this book, it's a wake up call! The former had us entranced though. The book itself was printed on incredibly tactile paper, reminiscent of a school exercise book, with a pen and ink illustration glued to the front. Inside, the words and drawings washed over me, cementing my resolve, and making the whole scheme seem totally achievable. Her loving descriptions of her own flock of Buff Orpingtons captivated me. She painted them as one of the most sedate, tolerant, gentle and enormous breeds available, likening them to 'the family Labrador'. I began investigating potential breeders in the back of Practical Poultry magazine

Time rolled on, and in 2007 we finally found our plot of land to self-build on; this was our opportunity at long last!

We enrolled on a Chicken Keeping course, actually run by Francine Raymond (I was star-struck) at the beautiful Assington Mill in Suffolk. Francine was so informative, no question was too silly, and she had an amazing life-size sculpture of an Orpington hen that someone had made her from chicken wire. Wow...that was a big sculpture!

I worked in sales at Forsham Cottage Arks, the wooden poultry housing specialists (before they were bought out by Omlet), and gained lots more practical experience with chickens, and started to devise how MrPB and I could keep a trio of hens safely in our new garden...which was still building site at this point!

We made contact with a well known Orpington breeder Priscilla Middleton, who lived about 40 minutes drive from us. We spoke a few times on the phone, then deciding that 2015 was THE year, we arranged to visit Priscilla in the Spring, once I was fully recovered from my hysterectomy operation in January.

Her yard is a chicken lovers heaven! Her flocks of bantams and normal size chickens wander around freely looking very idyllic, but her large fowl breeding birds are kept in pens out in a field.

A gorgeously fluffy, chocolate coloured Orpington hen was pecking around, and I drew MrPB's attention to her "That's an Orpington" I pointed out, and a look of relief appeared on MrPB 's face, she wasn't nearly as big as I'd been telling him... "Yes, she's a bantam Orpington...that one over there is a large fowl Orpington" His face fell, she was at least three times bigger than the pretty bantam! Teehee!

Finally in August we went back to Priscilla's, armed with a huge cardboard box. She had gathered together seven or eight pullets raised from different clutches that had hatched at approximately the same time.

I had already chosen names (*sorry*). I was hoping to get a Buff Orpington, a chocolate one and a Lemon Cuckoo one (I wanted to call her Miss Lemon after Hercule Poirot's secretary). Sadly Priscilla didn't have a Lemon Cuckoo available. D'oh!

Instead we chose a beautiful Buff, a stunning Silver-Laced and a sweet Lavender.

Clockwise from left to right: Silver-laced, Buff, Lavender
Photos by Pumpkin Becki

Introductions to the hens - Felicity

Felicity Lemon is stunning, her plumage has so many different textures, and in the sun she sparkles like spun gold. As she moves around she makes soft 'blob blob blob' noises, hence why one of the flock's collective names is the "Blob Blobs". She is probably the oldest of the three (by a matter of days), and came into lay on 30th November 2015.

Miss Felicity Lemon our Buff Orpington, approx 22 weeks old
Photos by Pumpkin Becki

Her eggs are enormous and torpedo-like, and the yolk is so yellow it looks unreal.

Felicity's first egg next to a 10p piece for scale
Photos by Pumpkin Becki

Introductions to the hens - Hetty

Hetty Wainthrop has the sweetest nature of the three, and her unusual dark eyes are very gentle. She's the trickiest to catch but enjoys a cuddle the most, settling down on your lap instead of standing. The breeder was experimenting with colours and also trying to introduce a 'Frizzle' characteristic to her 2015 offspring. I think Frizzles look daft personally, and as Hetty has grown and moulted she has developed a small patch of silly neck feathers that are Frizzle-esque, growing all twiddly and in the wrong directions. She has also developed random blobs of colour on some feathers, which means she is a Lavender-Splash rather than a pure Lavender. Probably also as a direct result of all this "breeding", her outer toes point sideways. This means they don't wear down own their own, so we have to help her by clipping them regularly.

Hetty takes everything in life slowly, she is always the last out of the coop in the morning and she was the last to come into lay, putting it off until Easter this year. Funnily though, although she wasn't ready yet, once the other two began laying, Hetty would always join them in the nest box, like a midwife offering encouragement. Her eggs are smaller and slightly more rounded than Felicity's. 

Mrs Hetty Wainthrop our Lavender Orpington with deep dark eyes, approx 22 weeks old
Photos by Pumpkin Becki

Introductions to the hens - Jane

Jane Marple, has a sharp, beady look about her. She's the noisiest...actually the sound she makes is like an angry goose, it's rather alarming! She is top of the pecking order and likes the others to know it, though they are so relaxed as a flock that there is never any actual harm done.

She is described as a Silver-Laced, and this refers to the pretty, dark outline around each and every feather. Only her 'fluff' is a plain brown/black. In fact when you look closely at Jane's lacing, you notice that it is not plain, but iridescent, like beetle wings or petrol.

Jane began laying in mid December 2015. Her eggs are small and viciously round! How she lays them I have no idea!!

Being a "breed" rather than hybrids, the ladies spend a lot of time "off-lay", but the eggs are just a welcome bonus really.

Miss Jane Marple (Silver-laced Orpington) and Miss Lemon (Buff) enjoy the delights of the garden, especially lavender
Photos by Pumpkin Becki

Chickens, was it worth the wait?

So, having waited seventeen years to get our ladies, was the wait worth it?

Absolutely!

They are everything I hoped they would be and more.