[Gpdd] MISC - impact of guinea pig adverts

Andrew a1.mills at portset.net
Thu Mar 2 14:21:22 EST 2006


I remember a few weeks ago there were some posts about guinea pigs being used in adverts here in the UK.  I just wanted to say that it appears they are impacting on guinea pig sales in the UK.  I went to a pet shop the other day and they were charging £23 for their females and £17 for their males.  The highest price I had ever seen a guinea pig for sale before was £13.  Also, I have noticed that there are very few guinea pigs in the local pet shops at the moment.  This may be partly due to the time of year but I also think the adverts have got something to do with it.  I mentioned to one shop owner how scarce guinea pigs appear to be at the moment.  She said that, because of the adverts, everyone is wanting to buy them and that people are charging higher than usual prices for them.  She was offered some for the shop but the breeder was asking £10 each for them.  She did not take them as she said she could not afford to pay £10 for them and then sell them for £12 or £13, she would have had to raise the price to make a profit and did not want to do this.  I only hope that, once the adverts stop being shown, people don't get fed-up with their new pets and start dumping them.  That's always the big worry with anything like this, they become very popular because of something and then, once the craze has died, people don't want the animals any more.  It happened with dalmatians because of the 101 dalmatians, it happened with turtles and terrapins because of the mutant hero turtles and it also happened to a certain extent with owls because of the Harry Potter books/films - although this did not appear to cause such a big problem, probably because owls are not widely available as pets.  I only hope it doesn't happen with guinea pigs because of these adverts.




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