Hi GBov,Akane & others with cuy experience.

[akane]

Almost boiling? I had to go well past boiling. I had to let it boil until it couldn't be bubbling more than that before it did anything to loosen hair and then double dipped them and scraped a ton.

 

[GBov]

Was it a very old male perhaps? My young males cleaned up a treat.

 

[akane]

I can't remember what age the 5 or so I tried to scald that time were and then I tried to do 2 others another time but I got impatient getting the water hot enough when I could probably skin the things faster now.

 

[GBov]

It's funny how some things work for some and not others. I hate radishes and yet mine always grow fantastically while my mum, who loves the nasty things, can only grow super hot dental floss.

Perhaps its the same with cleaning gpigs? :lol:

 

[ladysown]

So I don't know if it was all the space and running the gpigs did or the game bird feed that fixed the late-term abortions but they ended. I was glad too, little dead babies are always sad.

I found when I raised guinea pigs that they did better in bigger cages, running with a big herd than they do in smaller. Less dead babies and more action running around. It's also more fun watching develop their small cliques too.

 

[GBov]

So I don't know if it was all the space and running the gpigs did or the game bird feed that fixed the late-term abortions but they ended. I was glad too, little dead babies are always sad.

I found when I raised guinea pigs that they did better in bigger cages, running with a big herd than they do in smaller. Less dead babies and more action running around. It's also more fun watching develop their small cliques too.

I LOVED watching them, they are so funny in a big herd!

 

[akane]

We had them in a large fenced yard before we moved out of town. Probably considerably bigger than the double lot I have now in town. They didn't use the open space as much as large livestock but had a similar pattern of traveling between various grazing and resting areas as weather changed. We mostly kept only the same breeding age boar and sow at the end of every year so it was a family group of young daughters having 1 or 2 litters before being rehomed and the pups from several litters at any time. That led to them all following the oldest sow we kept for 8years and they'd run in a guinea pig train with the head sow in front and the mature boar in back. If a young one got lost going from place to place it would start wheeking louder and the boar would go find it while the sow slowed down. When they all got in view of each other instead of just noise they'd continue running full speed for the next building, our swingset with slide, the wood pile, around the pool, under the porch, through the pine tree row..... that they planned to eat around while sheltering. I have never been able to set up that much space again without predators. They had 12x12' horse stalls and then a 10x10' herb garden I fenced the little plots off for them to graze the grass spaces between or anything that hung over the wire. Usually I try for 2x6' cages minimum, preferably 30" wide cages. I did one 9' long. Anything smaller I only used for temporary situations like boar growout, a newborn litter that couldn't handle all the adults around, or sows I didn't want bred again.

 

[Greencaller]

I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of a large herd of animals running in a smaller space, and it doesn't want to stick for some reason, but I'm fascinated by it still.


So, akana, if you don't mind me asking, about how many gpigs of average size can one of your pens (2' x 6' x 30") house comfortably?


I'd love to let them run in a yard if I had one fenced, lol. Instead I thought about dragging out the ol' raised garden bed frames and re-purposing them as indoor/outdoor gp/rabbit yards. I have several and they would be easier to vermin-proof, with I hope enough to do rotational feeding. (Hutches on wheels?)

 

[GBov]

An electric lawn mower is your friend! I cut my yard in strips and feed the clippings to just about every animal here, including the one gpig we currently have.

If vermin are a big problem (here too) then you can get all the good of the grass but not lose stock or have to make stronger pens or lighter pens or whatnots.

 

[akane]

You can easily put 3-5 sows and a boar in 6' length if you are removing boars early to growout pens and don't allow the daughters to start having litters too. My cages frequently had a couple extra breeding age sows for periods of time before I'd make another colony out of the daughters I'd kept or cull some older sows. Remember guinea pigs are one of the most social animals you will find. They do better with enough space to exercise but are quite happy to always be within inches of another guinea pig and if you stick 6-12 individuals on an acre of land with plenty of grazing and cover most of the time they will all be within about an 8sq ft area. It is dependent on how well they can visually see each other on flat, bare ground versus tall grass, bushes, or uneven terrain but if given a grown out area when resting they will lay a few inches apart and when they travel it's nose to butt with anyone who can't see the others through tall plants immediately letting out louder wheeking to orient themselves and catch up. When you get very high numbers in more open or grazed down pens they start to mill about more and form multiple groups because they can find another individual easily and always hear many individuals around them. At that point you have more like a small cage setup expanded to a huge scale with enough guinea pigs to create an appearance of an equally filled space to them. The same as small cages the risk of getting lost or the need to travel as a single group from place to place is eliminated by how easily they can find another guinea pig again so they don't keep as tight of herd or travel to the same locations all at the same time like a smaller number in a large space will. They also don't need much individual hides, blocked off individual spaces, and broken line of sight like rabbits prefer. They do like to only graze around some type of barrier or shelter since they practically walk around wheeking "eat me" at everything but they don't need structures for much privacy from each other. You can use low covered areas large enough for the group or the various smaller groups within the herd to fit in together as their shelters or feeding/watering stations. Small hides are good to feel secure in small spaces, especially with lots of traffic around a cage, but you'll just find them standing on top of each other and complaining about it as they try to fit into the same little hide. In the yard they used the whole porch, in the outdoor medium pens I would throw down modified wood pallets to have a solid roof, and the pens in the stable I built frames and covered them with old horse blankets. One person did wood pallets with hay bales on top of them in a shed for eating, hiding, and winter warmth but they couldn't catch the guinea pigs all winter without taking it apart. With cages people often stretch a section of fleece fabric over one end of their cage and since I turned some free large bookshelves into floor pens I used the shelves to cover the ends of cages as their hiding area.

 

[Ghost]

Well I WAS thinking of skinning cuy if I ever get my hands on one, but after reading this incredibly informational post, I think I'd rather scald. (Hope they don't smell as bad as chickens, lol).

I suppose it is all a mater of preference, as I stated in my post http://rabbittalk.com/skinning-guinea-pigs-t32346.html. Even though I found my first attempt at skinning tricky, I will probably give it another try. I will try to follow the hog skinning video I found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx8u34wnsuo. I'll be sure to have a curved blade like X-acto #10 or X-acto #22 (a Google image search will give you examples) I even purchased a seam ripper, to test that out.

 

[michaels4gardens]

when I lived in Florida, I tried Guinea pigs for a while- the seasons were long, and grass and forage were almost always available-- I prefer the skin on, [skinning is also a lot of trouble compared to rabbits] I like them deep fried - or rubbed with salt and pepper, and baked- then at the last,- I uncover them and set the oven on broil , until they get brown and crispy - I like to dip meat pieces in butter and fresh chopped garlic..[no wonder i am so fat] .. I don't think raising them is too efficient in areas with long winters, as feed must be purchased -- unless,-- one had a greenhouse like I did in Florida..

 

[slov]

The trick with scalding is really REALLY hot water! Like, almost boiling. Then the fur just slips off a treat. The problem with burning it off, at least in real pigs, is the hair base is still IN the skin. I ruined all the crackling on a proper pig, trying the burn it off method.

My herd had slobbers in it - that's when the front teeth don't meet properly so after time they prop the mouth open, gpig drools all over itself and starves to death, not nice - but hard culling fixed that.

I also had pups born fully formed and dead, esp at the start of my experiment raising them. I was feeding pine for vit c which many told me was the problem but when I stopped feeding it, the dead pups still arrived.

That problem totally disappeared after I put all the gpigs into a wire sided shed, 15 by 10 ft. They lived with quail and I had feeders full of rabbit food AND quail food. Started feeding pine for vit c again as it was free, the quail ate the rabbit food and the gpigs ate the 21% protein game bird feed.

So I don't know if it was all the space and running the gpigs did or the game bird feed that fixed the late-term abortions but they ended. I was glad too, little dead babies are always sad.

Oh, as to the quail, they were the biggest I ever raised. It was so funny, they would dig little holes in the sand floor and sit in them, all you could see were the eyes. And the gpigs would stampede all around the pen edges so they were in constant motion, watched by the zen quail. :lol:

Hi,GBov.
I'm new to posting on a forum so I hope I'm doing this right and not sure you'll even see this. I know this is an old one. I was wondering how you got the idea to put your gp's with your quail. It sounds so crazy but I guess that ppl on farms or out of city limits can do this-letting many animals exist together. Thanks.

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

Hi,GBov.
I'm new to posting on a forum so I hope I'm doing this right and not sure you'll even see this. I know this is an old one. I was wondering how you got the idea to put your gp's with your quail. It sounds so crazy but I guess that ppl on farms or out of city limits can do this-letting many animals exist together. Thanks.

I don't know how Gbov had theirs but I imagine something similar to Joel Salatin's Raken house. GP in cages or pens with quail on the ground.