Update on our 94 girls

As you will have seen on our Facebook pages, a couple of months ago we had 94 female piggies came in and we've got an up-to-date progress report for you all.

The piggies were collected them from a breeder in Norfolk, as it's told they wanted new stock to breed from - a young male was also amongst the group! We could see from looking at them that their muscles had collapsed and they had been back to back bred so many times that they were exhausted.

We're sad to say that unfortunately we have lost a number of the ladies and their babies (some of which were aborted). Most of the Mums have now had their babies and are doing well so we will shortly be looking for some 5 star forever homes. 

Please get in contact if you can welcome some 4 legged friends into your loving home! 

http://avalonguineapigrescue.com/rehome.html 

Hay Donations

Just to say a HUGE thank you to Timothy Hay Company for donating a box of hay for our piggies - the babies are thriving off of it so we're going through it quicker than normal so it really is appreciated.

We've also been working with Hay For Pets too to receive donations. If you'd like to purchase some hay to keep our piggies warm in these winter months, just click on the link below:

http://www.hay-for-pets.co.uk/product.php?id_product=10

Alternatively, you can make a donation to the Rescue directly using our PayPal which will go towards dry food, carrots and all of their other favourites, wood shavings and hay: avalonguineapigrescue@hotmail.com

We appreciate every penny that's donated and the piggies appreciate it even more so a big "wheek wheek" from all of our four legged friends! 

Shaz Kelly: Why I love guinea pigs (Nottingham Post Article)

If you didn't see Shaz's great interview with the Nottingham Post back in December, you can take a read below or click here! 

Shaz Kelly, owner of the Avalon Guinea Pig Rescue centre, with guinea pigs Hurley and Penelope

"The faces of Angel and Parsley adorn the wall of Shaz Kelly’s living room like beloved family members

They both passed away last year, aged six, but each guinea pig holds a special place in their former owner’s heart.

Shaz, 56, has seen about 800 pets come and go since she turned her Wollaton home into a rescue centre but she doesn’t easily forget them.

Alongside the large canvas portraits of her two favourites are more than a dozen cherished pets in other photographs.

With guinea pig ornaments, stickers and a clock, the room is like a shrine to the animal she has devoted the past nine years to protecting from cruelty and abandonment.

Shaz, married to electrician Mick, 52, said: “They were our absolute favourites – there was something special about them.

“They were beautiful and whenever we went to school fairs the kids loved them. Both of them used to come for cuddles all the time. The day Angel came here and we bathed her she started licking my hand and that was it.

“It’s nice to remember them – it makes me cry.

“I wouldn’t swap this lot for the world. Sometimes it gets you down when you’re losing them through various ways but when I’m feeling down I’ll sit in the shed and they start climbing all over me.

“It picks me up – it’s like furry therapy.”

Shaz, who also works as a cleaner, already owned a family of guinea pigs when she decided to set up Avalon Guinea Pig Rescue at her Ewell Road home in January 2006.

Her daughter Sarah, now 28, noticed that unwanted guinea pig babies were being given away online so the self-confessed animal lover offered to take them in and find a new home.

Within the first year she collected about 30 pets and has gone on to re-home up to 600.

She keeps up to 200 at a time, storing them in two sheds equipped with hutches and heating, while she also has five cages in her living room and kitchen.

Shaz has about 30 large bags of dried food and 25 extra large bags of hay stored around the house. She spends about £400 per month running the centre and paying for veterinary bills, relying on donations and fundraising.

Some pets are given to her by owners who no longer want them but much of her stock is found at Melton Mowbray Market, where they are auctioned for token sums.

Last month, she was given 94 guinea pigs – all but one female and many of them pregnant – that a Norfolk breeder wanted to replace with younger animals.

Shaz, who is helped by friends, said they were cruelly treated and has so far re-homed about a dozen.

She said: “It’s disgusting and I was gobsmacked – they’ve gone through back-to-back breeding and their stomach muscles are shattered.

“These people have no value of the animals whatsoever and sometimes sell them for 50p each to be used as snake food or for ferret training.

“It got silly as we ended up coming back with big numbers but they needed to get out of there.”

With Christmas around the corner, Shaz expects a large number of enquiries but will turn down anyone who wants them as presents.

She said: “We put our foot down and say to people they can’t have them for Christmas because they’ll come back in a month.

“It’s often an impulse buy. Kids see guinea pigs in a pet shop and think they look cute but then get bored of them and can’t be bothered to clean up after them.

“Unless it’s someone we know or they want to replace a guinea pig then we tell them to come back in January.”

Shaz, who also has a Mastiff-Alsatian dog called Monty, five, took in Angel after learning about a man breeding guinea pigs in Keyworth.

She said she thought she had dark fur until she washed her and realised it was actually white but had been covered in mud.

“It was disgusting,” she said. “She had urine burns around her bum because she had been living in her own faeces.

“She had four babies but they all eventually died and she got depressed. She stopped eating and died.

“They like living in a herd and Angel couldn’t live without her children.”

And for Shaz, she couldn’t live without her guinea pigs.

Anyone interested in adopting or re-homing a guinea pig should contact Mrs Kelly on 07835172047.

Shaz Kelly gives advice on how to look after guinea pigs 

In the wild they are a herd animal so you need more than a few of them together in a cage, otherwise they will get lonely. There will always be one or two dominant ones in the cage.

The cage should be 120cm length upwards - ideally 140cm, which can hold three or four. It should have tunnels, hiding houses, chew toys, water bottles, bowls, hay, shavings and things to keep them amused.

They need feeding twice a day – once with fresh fruit, such as fruit and vegetables, and once with dried food like muesli or pellets.

Guinea pigs need to come out of the cage at least for an hour a day for cuddles and a run around

New members of the Avalon team!

~~RAFFLE TIME~~

Hi Everyone, I'm holding a raffle at Dove Vet's, Stapleford. The raffle will be running for the month of March, tickets are only 20p each or £1 a strip and the winning tickets will be drawn on the 1st April, there's at least 15 prizes to be won..... lets give this a good push for the rescue, Ann x
Tickets can be purchased via Paypal to my account - Here please send as a gift to avoid Paypal charges and I shall message you with your numbers.

Hay Arrives-Many Thanks

We were offered a good deal on some hay from Natures Own Pets: 50 bags of XL hay (which we use)  for just £125. As the weather is getting colder, we need to get the hay in, sooner rather than later.
Natures Own Pets Hay is IDEAL for us as it stores away easily, which is essential in our limited space.
A
s we are only a small charity, we very rarely have cash available up front. We asked for support on Facebook and Twitter, and had some reasonable response. Thankfully customers of FurEver Friends in Hucknall, Nottingham were able to top up the money. We were able to order the hay which arrived today. This will keep us going a wheek or 2 ;)
So a massive Thank You to EVERYONE who helped us out and donated towards the Hay and of course a HUGE Thank You to Natures Own Pets for your generous offer!!!

Don't forget you can DONATE at any time. We have over 200 little mouths to feed, and we rely 100% on public donations and goodwill.

50 XL bags of Natures Own Pets Hay

Now available-Supreme Petfoods Charity Calendar

Supreme Petfoods recently ran a competition on Facebook to find a charity to support. We were fortunate enough to win this competition!! Supreme Petfoods then asked people to send them photos of their cute pets to be judged to feature on a calendar. Once the feature pets were picked, it was announced that all pictures (of reasonable quality) would be on the calendar...one for each day. All proceeds of the sale of this cute animals calendar come back to Avalon!

The calendar is now ready to buy!! 

Help Avalon by getting your 2014 wall planner here.