farm guinea pigs (meat cavy!)

[Bug n Flock]

Hey folks!

I am new to the world of farming and recently started up a cuy project! I am very very very excited as this project has been in the planning stage for well over a decade.

Any other cavy keepers here? I am just starting my journey (bought my male on the 21st) so would love to chat about it and such!

Cheers,
Bug

 

[Bug n Flock]

Been a few months, and I have my first babies! 4 born yesterday.

They're cute. Real dang ole cute.

 

[Fuzzy Torpedoes]

Here is sweet little Goldie. 6 days old. Light sucks in the pic but it's good enough to get an idea.
She has a little bit of black shadowing on her back and ears.

 

[Bug n Flock]

Oh, and because it's worth posting also, pregnant pig pics!

This is their mother, Pocket, and she got huuge!

And more baby pics, cuz really: they're cute. Any girls (I can't tell them apart yet) will be kept as pets/breeders, and boys from this litter I will try to sell as pets probably. I'll use my current male for one generation beyond this, and then get an unrelated one to replace him. by then I should have a nice size herd hopefully, and not too inbred. Once I'm producing enough to make it worth the time, I'll try processing some.

 

[Hardwarehank]

Pictures of the improvements. Went to Walmart and got some wash tubs and cut an entrance in the side. Before with the igloos I would have problems with them flipping them over, effectively turning them into toilets and fairly useless for extra shelter in the event of a storm. With the tubs there's no more flipping and enough room for them all to huddle together. Bought some wire baskets while there and attached them to the side to hold alfalfa/grass hay in case there's not enough grass.

Got J feeders for all of the tractors off Amazon to hold an oat/barley/BOSS mix in. Cut out some rain flaps from scrap tarp. They flap around pretty easily in the wind so I need to get out there with some scrap 2x2 and staple it on to weigh them down. Built some wire shelves out of scrap to hold their fresh veggies off the ground. Getting much less waste from the veggies versus just piling them on the grass. Also hung water bottles from the side.

With the J feeders I'm only required to visit them once per day(I used to refill their bowls with the grain mix in the morning) in the evening to move them to fresh grass and give them fresh vegetables/forage and only have to remove and replace the wash tub when moving versus igloo/water bowl/feed bowl like before.

Here's Whiskey(the tan boar) leading his two sows around. If he bred them when I think he did they should be due middle/end of August.

Here's Moose(He's sort of hiding under the hay basket) with his two sows who will hopefully be due end of August/mid September.

Here's a group of future sows growing out. Hopefully be ready to breed end of September. A slight photobomb from my dog Buford being a creeper behind the hay basket.

And here's the two bachelors(Fred top, Squirrel bottom) patiently waiting.

So far the tractors are working out well. The one change I'd think of making is adding some type of peak in the top to help shed water(maybe running an extra 2x2 board down the middle). They collected a bit too much water in the last storm and could end up being a problem down the line, will have to keep an eye on it.

 

[Zoomie]

Wow, @Hardwarehank nice set-up, that should work a treat once you figure out how to get your little roofs to shed rain. Also great pics, @Bug n Flock and yes, they are really cute.

I'll be interested to see how this goes for you guys. I had heard about doing this, but never met anyone who was actually doing it. Best of luck in your endeavors and please keep us posted!

 

[Bug n Flock]

Whoo-hoo! Congrats! I'm 100% sure Pocket is pregnant again, and fairly heavily so. I'll be taking her out of the group pen this time before she has the pups, back-to-back pregnancy can't be easy for the gal, she deserves a break. My older sow may or may not be pregnant too, we will see. I hope she is! My boar is an American, and Pocket is also an American. Chili, though, is an aby. I sure hope she throws some cute little rosette covered babies for me.

The two girls from Pocket's first litter are in the group pen, so may be pregnant as well. I know, I know: inbreeding = bad. But when my special friend and I ducked out of town to catch the eclipse(one of the most amazing experiences in my life. We backpack camped in the mountainous back woods of Tennessee and caught totality on a mountaintop!), the safest way to make sure they all had food and water enough for the trip was to let them loose in the group pen with extra water bottles. /shrug. I'll be setting up a second group pen soon enough with an unrelated boar. Maybe more than one more group pen.... hehehe I have exciting news!

Sorry I have been so MIA! I ended up getting two new buns at the fair, a 2 year old NZ white doe and an 11 week old Silver Fox buck. The Doe is a MEAN thing. She was used to breed meat bunnies and lived out-doors without much human interaction I am assuming. I have named her Lucy........... Lucy Fur She has already met my boy Malice(Flemmie buck), and so is hopefully expecting a litter of buns in the next month.

The Silver Fox was raised by a 4-H'er and is suuuuuper friendly.

My special someone and I are looking at properties to start our farm on, and I am absolutely super duper excited! He is as taken as I am with farming and self sufficiency and just... like literally everything else. We are looking at a 100 acre lot with a creek and so so much woods. Prolly do goats and continue the current critter projects while we work to clear some land and build various structures and buildings.

Life is so good.

 

[Fuzzy Torpedoes]

Imo one of the biggest favors you can do for guinea pig babies is to be there for the delivery and assist the sow.

Expect to pick her up to help babies come out (be it necessary or not, frankly). You will be the one to ensure that the amniotic sac has popped off of the baby's face so it can breathe. Sometimes the sac over the baby's face breaks while coming out, but sometimes it does not. To break it, you use dry fingers and grip the sack somewhere around like, behind the ear or around the side of the neck (or maybe back behind the shoulder) and tear the sack off by pulling forward, unwrapping it from around the face. You should see the baby flop around a little and gasp, then you plop it down in front of the mother and let her have her little fun time.

Be prepared to move already-licked babies out of her way and position the newest-born babies right in front of her.

It is easy for these to have a baby pop out (or come partway out) and they spend their time licking the "wrong" baby instead of the one that needs to be cleared off. As far as reasons for babies to die, suffocating in their amniotic sacs after birth is not an uncommon reason in large professionally-managed colonies where the births aren't being assisted by a watchful human. In general, you don't wait or assume she's doing it right, and if you believe a new baby may be coming out (or is partway out) and you can't see what's happening, you pick the sow up and move her so you can verify.

Pay attention and don't assume if you can't really see if a baby has come or not. Verify.

Be mindful of breech births. You may note that they seem to be more work for the sow to push out. If you see or feel paws coming out first, that's a breech. When I get a breech birth, I generally pick up the mother and help it come all the way out using the baby's weight (she'll have several contractions that will get it out), and ensure that the baby's head is completely clear of the pelvis and get the sac off of the face.

When they are having the babies, they seem to assume that everyone present is there to help. They aren't necessarily in love with what you're doing and may give you a dirty look (or push your hand out of their way with their nose if they think you're an obstruction), but in my experience they don't find human intervention particularly stressful.

I had a litter born on the 14th where one of the babies had at least 3 amniotic sacs. This baby happened to be a beautiful gold and white baby girl. The 3 sacs made for a thick, tough membrane, when taken together. I don't think there's much chance that the sow would have been able to free that baby. I was like, damn.

 

[Fuzzy Torpedoes]

Oh, there's something I should clarify about what I mentioned involving individual housing for guinea pigs that are about to have their babies. It's intentionally in the same room as the usual pen, and there's always a neighbor right next to them, on the other side of an unmoveable hardware cloth wall. If I don't have 2 sows ready to have their babies at about the same time, I'll move the boar out of the big pen to be the company for the sow (I pull him out when she goes into postpartum estrus tho, males get bitey and noisy on the hardware cloth when that happens).

It's not good to move pregnant sows to where they cannot see another guinea pig, or to a totally unfamiliar room. I'm reading that they can drink less water than what they should and so-on if that's done.

Pic below is with both cage doors open (the Ferplast 120 cm with the double doors in the front). Button on the left with her new babies (they popped on Oct. 4, litter of 3, 67-day pregnancy). Boss on the right, on day 61 of a pregnancy.

Boss is a big-ish, strange, silver "chinchilla" type agouti (double gene for agouti, if I understand how this works, not finding great info on all that tbh). When she was only 2 days old she was trying to act like an adult. Never seen anything like it. She's socially good in a group, interestingly. With as weird as she was, I didn't know what to expect.

 

[Bug n Flock]

Wow I've missed a lot! Been busy. I'll read thru the new posts and post a better update later, but look: Maggie had a litter!