Yes you read that right! In some parts of the world guinea pigs are raised, bred, and have found themselves to be a staple diet item.
A pet guinea pig loving life relaxing on a leather couch.
In Peru for example many households raise guinea pigs in pens with the intention of eating them. Some are even given their own room inside the house, raised on a shelf system.
Guinea pigs raised on these shelves are afraid to jump off the ledges so they stay put, giving them more square footage of roaming space in the same sized room.
The idea of eating these mostly considered pets in the US was quite taboo. How ever from what I have seen the idea is slowly catching on! Import companies are saying their numbers of imported guinea pigs for sale to restaurants has more then doubled over the past few years. If this rate continues I won't be surprised seeing even more people raising them in back yards all across America.
Pen raised guinea pig farming setup.
From what I have read they appear to have good quality meat but due to their size they are usually served as a portion of a meal or it may take two to three of them to satisfy a hungry tummy. One of these days I will go out and try a guinea pig meal. From what I've been told they're very tasty and low in cholesterol.
Bricks can also be used to house the little ones.
Like any animal that is bred as a food source the process of selective breeding will begin to take place. In Peru there is a beast of a guinea pig called the Cuys Criollos Mejorados. A story on how some of these giant critters ended up in pet stores in California can be found here.
These (cuys for short) have both impressive and sad features to them. For example the adults grow to two to four times the weight of an average guinea pig which is a good meal size but due to them being incredibly inbred they only live about half as long.
Cuy standing next to a normal guinea pig for size reference.
When a breed of this size has been created then the possibility of raising them as a food source becomes even more of a possibility. I've kept an eye on this over the past few years and I've seen more and more people willing, wanting, or actually doing this.
A young man holding one of the giant cuy.
I resently read about a person paying 700$ to have six of the cuy imported to start farming them. Now I'll admit I saw some dollar signs when I read that. We are talking about over 110$ per guinea pig. Not only were they willing to pay that much but they were willing to pay that much for this incredibly inbred breed. Can you imagine if someone was to start a breeding program for guinea pigs with the goal to increase the meat production, size, and make them more tame (the cuy were very skittish) how much money they could sell them for if they made sure to avoid inbreeding? Remember that's 700$ for six cuy that will probably not live past two years. If someone had an eight pound guinea pig that had a better meat to bone ratio and could produce litters for several years they would be sitting on a little squeaking gold mine.
Personally I do not understand how to selectively breed animals. The concept is simple enough, if you want larger guinea pigs only breed the largest, that much I get. Where I get lost is when you try to selectively breed for multiple traits size, temperament, and meat to bone ratio. Which ranks highest? Do you breed for one first then the next? Is it more of a bouncing around from trait to trait as litters are born? This is something I need to learn more about. I've already been told in many different ways that I am not allowed to try and produce meat quality guinea pigs in my house (girl friend put her foot down) but if any of my readers put there do start a program to produce these or to try and breed the health hazards out of the cuy please let me know and I'll be sure to be one of your first customers!
Comment down below, would you ever eat a guinea pig, or consider raising some for food production?
A year or so ago I worked on starting my own rabbitry. It was doomed from the start but I feel I should share my experience here so others can learn from my mistakes. This was the first build for my rabbitry.
It wasn't complete at the time of this video I did more work to it like finishing up the back wall to protect from the wind. Almost from day one however this setup seemed to give me one problem after the next. For example having a tarp for the roof seemed like a great idea. Light weight and water proof I figured I only needed to raise the center higher then the sides and I would be set. First I hooked the tarp on nails through the eyelets. When wind hit that tarp it didn't take long before the eyelets were no longer hooked. Then I tried using wire to tie down the tarp which held much better... Until the first time it rained. The weight of the water collecting up top tore and pulled enough to show that wasn't working. While fighting with this on a daily basis the watering system showed me just how flawed it was. I rushed the curing time to seal the outlet on the five gallon buckets, big mistake. The buckets never stopped leaking even after I in the end probably applied a full tube of aquarium sealant to each bucket. When I finally got the buckets to almost stop leaking the rabbits chewed through the hose. So fed up with that system I instead switched to water bottles while I continued tweaking the tarp roofing.
Finally after a few weeks of trying I made it so the tarp worked great. It was stretched tight and angled just right so that when it rained at night it barely held any water at all and I could easily pour that off in the morning. In all that tweaking of the tarp I had it very tightly secured to the two by fours you can see in the video.
One night disaster struck my rabbitry. I got a phone call around 4:30 am from one of my neighbors. The man on the phone said he was in his back yard and he hear a loud bang and could see a large animal in with my rabbits! I jumped out of bed (in a very sleepy state) and ran out the door with a baseball bat. Of course not just any baseball bat oh no, this bat was probably about the size of my forearm. I still don't know why we have that thing. Once I got back there I was relieved to see there was no animal but I was dismayed that the tarp roof had finally met its match. Apparently while we slept a very good amount of water had collected on the tarp. So much water that it ended up pulling several of the two by fours off of the four by four posts. I was greeted by the stares of all of the rabbits on the north side of my rabbitry (right side of video) confused, scared, and leaning sideways. I saw a very large amount of water still on the tarp, in the mind set of get the rabbits back upright and fix it properly when you wake up. Still mostly asleep I didn't think twice of using the bat to push up on the tarp to let the water fall off... directly onto my head. Did I mention it was mid January? My girlfriend at this point came wandering outside to see what was going on and was greeted by the sounds of her six foot four boyfriend screeching like a four year old girl. It took her a few days to stop laughing.
Finally I had had it with the home made disaster hutch. I went on craigslist and found someone who was willing to build me a 12 hole rabbit hutch for four hundred dollars. At this point I was so frustrated with my current setup that I sent him the money. Mind you during all this time I hadn't raised a single baby rabbit. My rabbits mated but never once had a litter, more on that later. Now I was a good six to seven hundred in the whole and all I've gotten in return was one meal and higher blood pressure.
The new hutch worked like a charm.... For a few months. Each hole was separated from the next by a sheet of quarter inch plywood. Access to the hutch was done by lifting the hinged roof. Half on one side and half on the other. Soon the rabbits noticed that the plywood divider didn't reach all the way up and they were able to start chewing at it. Eventually allowing them access to the other cages. A few of them were more ambitious and tried to cross over the divider before they had chewed enough of it away. I was welcomed in the morning to see that some had managed to get stuck and hang themselves during the night.
I eventually came up with a brilliant idea. I could put them back in their all wire cages and set them on the grass. Free food for them and no more hanging! Brilliant! Instead of asking online for help I was so determined to rewrite the wheel I didn't bother to see if this was a bad idea. It was. The remaining rabbits got sick and died on me. I was very sad over my failures at this point, with nobody to blame but myself I figured I shouldn't get another rabbit until I've learned a lot more about keeping them.
Overall we had the rabbits for about a year. We went through three different housing set ups for them. In the end I will say that I learned a lot, especially how not to house them. Also after doing the math with the amount of money I was spending to feed the rabbits and how much in a perfect world I could make off them it added up to me making negative six cents per baby bunny I raised up to selling age... Yes I was losing money even if I was breeding the maximum amount of times per year, getting the maximum amount of kits per litter, and each kit got to 5 lbs I'd still be losing money.
Since that "learning experience" I have done my homework and I've seen even more of my mistakes. For example when we first got the rabbits they were to young to breed. We knew this and didn't start trying until after they were of age. Two problems with the timing. When we got them it was about the end of summer still pretty warm in georgia around that time. On particularly hot days we already knew to freeze water bottles and give them to the rabbits to cool off.
Bunny staying cool by snuggling up to a frozen bottle of water.
At least that we did right. Unfortunately we did this when we felt it was hot out. We didn't think to see if the rabbits felt it was hot out. Did you know that when a male rabbit is exposed to heat over 85 degrees it can go sterile for several months? I sure didn't. We gave them ice to keep them cool, we even misted the rabbits with the garden hose to help, but the temperatures were in the high 80s to low 90s when we did this. So heading into the fall the boys were sterile. When we tried to breed them nothing happened. We continued into the winter and nothing happened. Many rabbits don't breed during winter.
As I said since then I've done my homework. I still have the old all wire cages and chewed up hutch in my backyard to provide me with motivation. I've redesigned the hutch ( on paper ) to include an underground area for them to hide and remain cool in while giving them more floor space and giving their feet a break from the wire floor. I've also managed to design it in a way that will make cleaning it very easy and keep them sheltered from wind and rain. I've also done my homework on feeding them healthier but cheaper meals! So this time around when I do start up again the system will be much more planned out, and I will be much more prepared. I will be sure to post pictures on this blog when construction begins, but all of this will be in my successful rabbitry post not in this fail blog. Be sure to follow this blog so you will know when and how I will do it!
I wouldn't try to raise this breed I just think they are funny to look at!
I found myself forced to figure out livestock that is not defined as livestock. After looking around I've settled on two animals that I think I can get away with. Rabbits and quail. Rabbits are considered pets and quail (though needing a permit) are considered a game bird. Through my studies and research I've discovered a few other types of not livestock animals and the ways they are raised and I wanted to share my adventures here with you all!
It's been a few years since I've moved down here and many things have gotten in my way. New job which regularly takes me out of town, family troubles, etc. but I am still determined to start small here and learn as much as I can while I save my pennies until I can afford to leave.
During my time down here I tried my hand with some rabbits. We were lucky enough to find a guy who was getting away from rabbits and was willing to sell us a small chunk of his supplies for dirt cheap prices. We were so thrilled we jumped in head first. Unfortunately we were unprepared and undereducated on what to do.
One day neither of us had ever had a pet rabbit before and the next we had 12 rabbits, 9 all wire cages, and no where to put them! I scrambled and built a make shift shelter for them. It didn't take long for the tarp roof to begin to collect water and collapse my construction efforts. So we rebuilt and then paid someone 400$ to build us a professional looking hutch. That hurt my wallet but they seemed much happier.
The breed of rabbits we went with are New Zealand whites a breed made for their meat production and white fur.
We made many mistakes with those rabbits and eventually they all passed on in various ways. However they were a huge learning opportunity! For example I struggled trying to figure out why my rabbits wouldn't breed for me. I put them together and they did their thing but I never got a single kit! It was incredibly frustrating and entirely my fault.
Follow along as I blog about my adventures and what I have learned along the way. My failures and successes will be shared here. When starting out something like this any failure is just a learning experience and once you stick to it and try different things you'll eventually succeed. Currently I am redesigning a new rabbit hutch that I will build which will be more like a bunny McMansion when compared to what they're usually raised in. Hit that follow button so you don't miss out. My goal with these animals since I will be traveling out of town regularly will cause me to design their setup to be as maintenance free as possible. In this blog I will talk about the different animal rearing I've learned about along with my shortfalls and success stories.
