Category: Food

A new box of hay

On By BigglesIn Food4 Comments

Hello, Biggles, here.

It’s been a restful sort of week. Last week I had a bath, as Roscoe told you. It hasn’t quite stopped my skin itching, but it’s a lot better. Mummy said she’d give me another this weekend, but she didn’t.

What she did instead was to check when our next hay delivery was due. “Two weeks, boys.” she said. I reckon we can start the new box and see if it’s any better.”

Well, I don’t think any of us had actually complained about this hay. It was sort of not bad, but not very nice. It had a lot of leaves and hard bits and stuck together bits. We weren’t eating as much of it as usual. And that’s why I lost weight the week before last. I made a better job of it this week. Mummy’s happy with my weight again.

Mummy filled the hay bag with hay from the new box. She gave us all huge handfuls of it when she’d taken out the other stuff. This morning she’d filled up the hayboxes we use for playtime. I had to explore it, but at first I couldn’t get in! There was so much hay, and I needed to jump, but whenever I jumped, it slid away on the floor. Mummy moved it to a different position for me and I got in the next time. It was really deep and luxurious. So deep I decided to have a nap. I only woke up when Mummy started taking photos.

So I think we’re happy with this hay. I don’t know what Mummy’s going to do with the other. Maybe we’re going to have some of each for a while, till they are both used up. Or maybe she’ll use it on the garden plants to keep them warm. Good luck to them, but I suppose they don’t mind the odd leaf or ten.

Mummy’s been busy at her screen all week. And she’s been talking to people on it all over the weekend. It’s very funny when she does that, like she’s talking to the wall and the wall’s talking back. But we know it’s really other people.

I hope you have a good week.

Love

Biggles.

Well, that’s over

On By BigglesIn Food5 Comments

Hi, Biggles here. That’s Christmas over, then.

We had a nice time, lots of food. For Christmas Day we had carrots – funny yellow ones but they tasted good. We also had kale and chard from the garden, salad from the fridge thing, celery, and herbs – sage and rosemary I think they’re called. And in the afternoon we had Christmas cake. It’s like birthday cake, but we just got a portion each in our bowls.

Uncle James didn’t come, so our hay stayed in the spare room. The new box came on Tuesday, and we started it straight away. It’s not as nice as usual. The hay’s okay but not as nice as usual. It has lots of leaves in it, but nothing poisonous. Mummy’s a bit disappointed. She gave us some of our home-grown hay with it last night. It was yummy. We also got a funny green stick with nobbles on it. The nobbles tasted like cabbage, and the stick tasted like broccoli stalk a bit. I quite liked it, but it was better when Mummy cut it in half down the middle. We could eat the softer inside bit then.

Oh, Christmas presents! I got a nice new big snugglesac. You can see a picture of me with it. I sat in it Christmas night and it was lovely. Yesterday Mummy took it away and washed it. It smells better now. Ludo and Locksley got a nice grey snugglesac, with white stars on it. I think it’ll be the perfect camouflage sac for Locksley. They are very suspicious of it. They are suspicious of everything, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

Roscoe and Neville got new tents for the summer. I think they were a little disappointed they didn’t get something new for their run. Roscoe admitted he didn’t want Mummy to take any of their things away, so maybe it was all right.

And we all got some chew sticks from the nice lady next door, Auntie Linda. It was very kind of her to think of us, and we’re very grateful.

Apparently Ludo wasn’t very well during his cuddle time yesterday. Mummy stayed home to keep an eye on him. She was going for a walk at the same place as her other brother, but didn’t. Ludo was a bit funny getting back into his cage afterwards. He sort of fell out of the tent instead of stepping out. Mummy picked him up again and took him off for a check-up. That’s when she decided to stay home and keep an eye on him. But she went out to get us some cucumber later. I haven’t seen anything wrong with Ludo. I’ve been keeping an eye on him too. Maybe it was Just One Of Those Things.

That’s it for now. I’m going away, and I won’t be back till next year! Have a nice week.

Love

Biggles xx

Hampshire 5 at Christmas

What are you doing for Christmas?

On By geordieroscoeIn Food, guest interviews7 Comments

Way-aye, Roscoe here. It was good to have a week off last week, and I reckon Biggles did a great job, don’t you?

I’ve been busy turning up at other people’s Christmas parties. There’s this one with Auntie Sally, and this one with Auntie Sue (who we’re busy Thinking To, as well as to Auntie Mary), and her dog Ani. And Mollie’s friend Lilie was with Ani too.

We were all set for a happy Christmas, with Uncle James coming to stay, and us finding room for the extra hay boxes that are staying in his room to come into ours. Then somebody that keeps changing his mind decided we couldn’t have him to stay because he’s in a different area from us.

Mam’s a little down in the dumps, but she was very good yesterday. She told me she didn’t want to do anything, but she ought to go out for her in-the-woods competition. It’s got a proper name but I forget it. Anyway, it was a sunny day, so she went. She told me she was glad she had and she really enjoyed it. And her friend Mary couldn’t get any parsnips, and we’ve got plenty, so Mary is getting some of our parsnips. Mam likes them, but we don’t.

Mam spent most of the weekend watching her moving pictures that talk to her, some with horses, some with snow and ice, and some with dancing. The dancing was exceptionally brilliant, and she said the two best dances she’s ever seen on it were done on Saturday. So she’s keeping herself busy, and reorganising all her food schedules, now she’s going to be here with us, and nobody else.

Our food has been a little sparse the last couple of days. Short of green leaves, that is. We’ve had more carrot to make up for it, because Mam’s usually very stingy with our carrot portions. She says it makes us put on weight. I think she’s got lots of carrots, and lots of other veg we don’t eat, so she’s working out how to keep us in lettuce and cucumber over the next week. But in the new year she says we may well have to go without bought lettuce on several days. She’s saving our veggie patch veggies for then.

our veggie patch in summer
Our veggie patch in summer

I asked if it was the avirus that was killing the lettuces, and she says no, that’s just killing Christmas get-togethers. It’s the Exit that’s killing the lettuces. She’s been planning for the Exit, but she can’t store fresh lettuces for weeks for us. And one of her pots of lettuces she was trying to grow over winter died last night. There are others that are growing, though. We might get a leaf every now and then. But we’ve got plenty of hay, pellets and readigrass, so we won’t starve.

And we may still have our Christmas party, if Mam can remember what she did with our Christmas pudding.

It’s behind you, Mam!

(That’s from a pantomime, which is a traditional Christmas play).

Anyhow, that’s what we’re doing at Christmas. Well, what we’re not doing. Everything else will happen unintentionally. It’s called Improvisation, and we’ll enjoy it.

I hope you have a good Christmas.

love

Roscoe

xxxxx

PS Mollie, thanks for taking the trouble to comment on last week’s post, I reckon that means your Mam’s move has gone okay.

Roscoe

Hay crisis averted!

On By geordieroscoeIn Food2 Comments

Way-aye, Roscoe here again.

Someone asked why I say Way-aye. It’s a friendly greeting where I come from. You might say Hai, hi or hello. I say way-aye. So does Nev. Biggles says Hello, and so does Mam.

Hay! Is another greeting I suppose, but Mam says when it is, it’s usually spelt hey. No, I’m talking Hay, that wonderful stuff that makes up 80-90% of our diet, depending on whether we’re getting grass or not.

Hay is lovely stuff. Or should be. It should smell sweet, taste crunchy. It fills up our bellies, and helps us grind our teeth down. Our teeth grow all the time, so they need to be kept down. That’s why we eat all the time. Biggles takes breaks between his eating for more eating, we take breaks for sleep. I think Biggles eats in his sleep. Mam says I’m exaggerating, and get on with it.

We also sit on it, play with it, and enjoy it during our run time with hay-in-a-box!

When we moved here we tried a few different types of hay available locally, and also some Mam had brought down from Norfolk, which we liked best. But then she started getting it delivered from Haybox.

It comes in huge boxes, but small enough to store next to the armchair in the summerhouse. She gets two 5kg boxes delivered on subscription. Before Bertie died we got it every six weeks, and then we only needed it every eight weeks.

This weekend Mam was in a panic because she’d lost a box of hay. Well, the one we were using was running out and she only got it in early September. And we’re only just past early October. She wondered where the second box had gone, and then realised… With the two littlies each eating as much as one of us, and not going out on the grass so much, we’d eaten the whole of the second box in two weeks!

She sorted it out for an urgent delivery with the lovely Richard at Haybox, and it’ll be here tomorrow. She says we needn’t panic because we’ve got at least one week’s supply of hay that she made in the summer stored carefully away. She also said that when she had six pigs before she got through a 2kg bag a week, so she suppose with three cages to look after, and Locksley growing, 2kg a week now is about right, and she’s changed the order to every five weeks.

Lots of parcels arrived this week. There’s one that looks like a calendar and another that looks like a pillow that she’s put on our shelf. She said “those are for Christmas.” Oooh, presents! Pillows and calendars don’t sound that exciting, though.

So all’s well here, and Ludo ate his cucumber last night, when Mam put it in front of him in his snugglesack. Locksley took it from Mam’s hand, although he was still sitting in his tunnel at the time. And Locksley’s over 400 grams now.

And Mam keeps waking up late and giving us late breakfast. She says she’s gone onto GMT now it’s past the equinox, whatever that all means. Sigh. Mam.

See you next time

Love

Roscoe xxxxx

Please ignore Roscoe

On By bertie bootsIn Food4 Comments

Hi everyone, Bertie here.

I don’t know what was up with Roscoe last week.  He’s exaggerating wildly, and it’s not fair on Mummy. He’s just being a drama queen at present, and nobody can say why. He bumped his nose in the week, and sat in the corner of his cage saying ‘woe is me’ and other things.  Mummy saw he was all fluffed up and took him to Dr Sally.  Dr Sally couldn’t find anything wrong with him either.  I think he had some Metacam and was better straight away.

Maybe Roscoe is just sensitive to all the things going on at present. Mummy explains everything to us, and we never go hungry, even if she’s away overnight.  And mostly when she goes away she takes us with her these days.

Mummy’s very busy with her books and with legal things, and anxious about things that nobody can do anything about. I heard her saying to Uncle James on the phone she was worried about having fresh veg for us this winter, because there won’t be any in the new garden.  Apparently famers in the UK can’t grow many lettuces in the winter, so there’ll be a shortage until the new import/export rules come in.

She’s been looking at the labels on our veggies now that autumn has come.  Cucumbers come from the Netherlands, along with peppers, broccoli and cauliflower. Lettuce mostly comes from Spain. Beans come from Italy or Egypt. I like beans but Roscoe and Neville still don’t eat them. Cabbage and kale comes from the UK, but we can’t have much of those.  The big bunches of herbs come from Italy, Spain or Belgium.  Mummy says that if we move to our new garden we might have to go without fresh veg for a few days a week, but she’ll look for dandelion leaves and things like that. She’s planted some pots and troughs of carrots, lettuce and kale to take with us. And there’s a big pot of lavender, and she’ll put some mint in a pot before it dies back.

So, don’t believe Roscoe when he says Mummy isn’t looking after us properly.  She says she’s also stockpiling hay and readigrass, just in case. Whatever that means.

See you next week.

Love,

Bertie xxxx

 

Roscoe and Neville2019

Slimmers World, first report

On By geordieroscoeIn Food, Health3 Comments

Hi there, Roscoe here.

Well, we’ve been eating these pellets for over a week now, and we’re all okay with them.  They’re not perfect, but you kinda get used to them.  I reckon in a week or two I’ll be saying they’re right tasty.

Biggles in a Bed

Update on our weights: Bertie is about the same.  Biggles went up 10 grams and down twenty grams.  That could be just that he’s wee’d or not.  I’ve done much the same. Saturday I was up 10 grams, but Mam says I’m doing okay really.  Neville’s a little star, he put on 20 grams the first week and lost 40 this week.

What I notice about Neville is he’s much keener to poke his nose into stuff and find tasty things to eat.  He used to just laze around and eat what was in front of him.  He even stood up against the cage side the other day when it was cucumber time.  Mam is real pleased with him being more mobile, but she doesn’t hear him moan that he’s starving.  He’s desperate for that cucumber!

I think the ready-grass is helping because it changes what we think of as food.  Mam’s putting it in our bowls, and it’s really difficult to have an empty bowl when you’ve got bits of grass in it.  We have managed to lick them clean on a couple of days though.  But we’ve always got lots of hay, so we can eat that, and play in it, and hide in it, and that keeps us from feeling hungry.

Mam says she’s doing well on her own diet some days, and not so good on others. But she’s doing her best, and she’s been doing more exercise too.  I think she does a lot of moving around to some special music she puts on every evening. Maybe we should have some music to move around to, too, Mam.

At least we’re all suffering together.

See you next time

Roscoe xxx