Free Ranging Guinea Pigs

[sailaice]

Does anyone know of anyone that free ranges guinea pigs in their back garden or have they heard of this??

[Two_Sheds]

I have guinea pigs in a run on the lawn.
I would never leave them out unsupervised though ... the local cats harrass them already through the mesh, and they are small enough to slip under gaps in fences and hedges.

[PAULW]

I believe this is quite popular in Chile where you can get free range organic guinea pig burgers in most outlets

[lynda66]

my rabbits used to free range when i lived at home, i'd go down after school and shout come on bunnies, and they'd all get back into their cages at night for dindins ...... guess it depends whether you have any predators, or they can escape and not come back.

[MrsC]

I wouldn't recommend it, we now have 1 guinea pig left, the other died a few weeks ago after the local fox decided to rip apart the top of their run, it scared it to death. The cats also still harass the remaining guinea pig and Mr Fox still makes his nightly visits.

[crichmond]

I believe this is quite popular in Chile where you can get free range organic guinea pig burgers in most outlets

I hear they are quite popular in places like thailand, very nice bbq'ed apparently.

[Two_Sheds]

Mr Sheds ate guinea pig in Peru, said they taste like sh1t (he is very blunt)

[BarleySugar]

A friend of mine used to let her guinea pigs run the garden all the time. They were very timid though, I think she just couldn't be bothered to catch them. Her garden fence was pretty good, but the poor things seemed to spend most of their time hiding. They didn't get put away or petted at all, and I couldn't see the point to be honest, her children got no benefit from having pets.

At the time our cats were afraid of our guinea pigs, when they were kittens they had put their paws through the mesh of the run, and our boar went for them. However I wouldn't have liked to leave them unsupervised with total access.

My sister did have a good set up with some of hers. She used to breed for a pet shop, and in her shed she built some pens on the floor, with upturned boxes with holes cut out for sleeping quarters, the boxes could be lifted up and moved out for cleaning, and she just used to shovel all the dirty bedding out. What I liked about it was she'd have around 10 to a pen, but the kids could climb in and sit on the boxes to play with them. The pigs were very friendly and always came out as soon as you went into the shed. This meant that her babies were used to being handled from a young age. Although it was for commercial purposes, they all seemed very happy, and she used to grow trays of grass to put in the pens, as well as any other greenery we all gave her. In summer she used to put mesh up at the windows to keep cats out, but close them in the winter. She did use to put some out in the run, but as they generally had plenty of space it wasn't so important as if they were hutched.

[kentvegplot]

When I was a child, our guineas used to regularly escape and 'free range' next door :-)

[jackie j]

We made a run for our guinnea pigs when they were little what we didnt realise was that the holes in the fence was too big and as they were just a few weeks old they could get through, flowers nearly had a fit to see her pets dissapearing, it was so funny, we caught them and before we put them in the run again we put smaller holed fence around the bottom, we also put a lid on that we could undo to be able to get in with them and flowers used to sit on the grass letting them crawl over her. The lid meant we could leave them and the cats and the seagulls couldnt get at them. I think its best to keep them in something for them to be safe. We just bought some plastic square shaped fencing and tied it together to make a square run.