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I became a guinea pig breeder back when I was a kid during the early 70's.
My first cavy was a beautiful American sow - a marked cream that
I named Pixie. My brothers had the boars - one was a brindle American boar
named Charleston Chew and my other brother's was a tortoiseshell American whose
was name was Tony. We bred and raised several cavies during the 70's - mostly as
pets which we sold to other friends and to school teachers. Although I was
in 4-H, my time was spent exhibiting my horse so I never entered my cavies in
the fair - in fact I don't remember cavies at our fairs back then....
My brothers and I had to do
all our own cavy work - and cleaning cages for so many was quite a chore!
We didn't have a lot of money and any extras or treats had to be earned by us -
I remember begging the produce manager at the local Eagle supermarket for his
leftover greens for our herd of cavies - I am sure he thought we were nuts, but
gave us a good supply anyways, which we'd carry on our bikes all the way back
home. During my high school years and early twenties, I was busy with
other things and did not have cavies again until my own kids were born and
growing.
Once I got back into cavies with my
own kids I realized that not much had changed and fell into a comfortable
routine with our new guinea pigs. As soon as the kids were old enough to
exhibit animals in our local fairs, they all decided to start showing through
our local 4-H club. Back then, the kids each had a mixed-breed guinea pig
purchased from a local pet store. Kelly had an Abyssinian-mix name
Nibbler, with whom she won many cavy showmanship awards.
Jody had a beautiful American-Silkie cross (I think) named Rainbow, and my other
son, Tony, had a red-agouti mixed breed named Speedy, who grew to be the largest
guinea pig I've ever seen-my friend even commented that he looked like a ground
hog! The kids exhibited these cavies in the pet cavy and showmanship
classes at our local fairs for a couple years, and all did very well - they have
many trophies, ribbons and memories from these fairs.
Soon, Kelly and Jody decided they
wanted to to breed guinea pigs and get into the purebreds. At that time, we
purchased a brindle Abyssinian boar, Charlie, and a roan Abyssinian sow,
Mergie to begin our
breeding program. These two pigs were produced by breeder Linda Shull, a
show breeder during the 90's who produced some fascinating dilute colors, along
with the standard colors. Unfortunately, we were not able to get pedigrees
for any of our foundation stock; Linda had lost all her cavy records during a
recent move, and since she was no longer actively showing, the pedigrees and
records were not all that important to her anyway.
She
did give us interesting background history on each of our pigs though, and we
were assured they are purebred. We later returned to purchase several
Americans, dilute Abyssinians and more from Linda!
From the time we purchased Charlie and Mergie we produced a lot of nice pigs and
soon began line-breeding. Kelly absolutely loved the Abyssinians with their
quirky, active behavior and funny looks! She was able to produce some nice
Abbies with our foundation stock and did well showing. She also got into
some of the other breeds that we first got from Linda Shull, and won BIS with a
nice American Creme boar at a fair!
Our herd of cavies grew to about 35,
but our frustration in finding venues to exhibit them resulted in our decision
to sell almost all our stock over the winter of 2003-2004. 4-H limits the number
of cavies an exhibitor can show, and the allowable number was so low that we
couldn't even exhibit a good sampling of our stock. Our attempts at
getting the local 4-H rabbit/cavy fair committee to allow an increase in cavy
entry numbers (to the same as how many rabbits can be shown), failed repeatedly,
despite the fact that cavies don't take up much space!. Since that time,
we had noticed a decline in purebred cavies at the fair, and by the last year we
exhibited, almost all the cavies entered were pet-quality and mix-breed cavies. ARBA-cavy
showing in Wisconsin was practically non-existent at the time. Why have that many
cavies if there is nowhere to show them? They all become 'pets' at that
point, and no one needs over 25 pet guinea pigs to care for!
 Mergie and Charlie produced
some beautiful Abyssinians. Vortex was
this pair's greatest accomplishment - born on Christmas morning 2002,
he was as
near-perfect Abyssinian boar as I have ever seen and consistently won at our
local fairs.
Vortex only had the opportunity to produce a few litters
before he died in the prime of his life during the summer of 2004; At a
fair, the owner of the guinea pigs he was cooped next to, casually mentioned
that she was "amazed her pigs are still alive because they had recently been so
ill!"
I was clearly upset to hear this and although she removed her guinea
pigs, it was too late - the week after fair, Vortex came up critically ill and
although we rushed him to the vet, he died
not an hour after we got the first dose of antibiotics into him. This was
a huge loss for our already-scaled-back breeding program, but we felt fortunate
that our other cavies remained healthy.
In fall of 2004, with only a
barebones selection of breeding stock left, we decided to start up breeding
again. We had a renewed interest in again producing some awesome cavies and were
looking forward to our upcoming litters. Kelly did produce some nice Abyssinians
and went on to win BIS youth with one of her own cavies in 2005, and that fall
at the ARBA Convention, won BOV with that same cavy, plus won BOB with one of
her Abyssinians bred by Mike Ginder.
In 2006 we made the decision to get out of cavy breeding
and showing and so dispersed our entire herd with the exception of a few
favorites which Kelly will keep as pets.
2006 Notes
All of the cavies mentioned
above, have passed away - we will always remember these first cavies, as they
were our teachers as much as they were our beloved pets.
In hindsight, we are disappointed
in ourselves that we did not carry on some of the lines we had though-
some of the Abyssinians we produced were gorgeous representatives of their
breed.
We have 'thrown in the towel' as
far as breeding and showing cavies goes - and are concentrating on our rabbits
for now.
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