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Grazing guinea pigs in the orchard/chook yard out of town. |
- More space to roam again. I really dislike keeping them caged up. I much prefer having them roam on their own and keeping them in the chook yard will give them a bit more freedom once again.
- They will still be in a semi-secure area and have access to convenient shelters from curious chooks, stray cats and whatever else may come their way such as storms or hail.
- When they were free-range before they snuck into the chook yard to nibble on scraps and now they can share the feast freely. This means that we won’t have to discern between what we feed the chooks and the guinea pigs. All the kitchen scraps for them can go in the one spot and they can deal with them at their leisure.
- Being in the one spot – as with the chooks – means that their droppings will be concentrated in the one area and this will make it easier to clean. I actually don’t see it as cleaning anymore because now that I am using the woodchips in the yard I just need to keep it turned over until I use it on the garden – and then it will have chicken and guinea pig manures in it!
- The greatest advantage is that with the six remaining guinea pigs being in the chook yard I can remove the hutch and use the garden space to plant more vegetables. It also means that although they are not free-range in the garden, I can concentrate on planting vegetables wherever I wish and not having to protect certain plants from hungry guinea pigs. Given that I am really playing all out in the garden this year for a big harvest this is going to be very helpful.
I will need to make some slight modifications to the chook yard perimeter to make sure the guinea pigs stay where they are required, but still give the chooks a bit of access to places.
Oh, I must mention too that we have had Jennifer Aniston go clucky again and have been given some fertilised eggs from a friend so I also need to give her a bit of room to have her own space.