Be careful buying in bulk!

[Danielle Smith]

I'm the frugal sort, so I like to buy things in bulk. 20kg pea flakes here... 15 kg Readigrass there... 15kg bags of Harringtons. While we go through the pellets quickly enough, it has taken a couple of years to get through the rest.

Consider this a warning -- my peaflakes and Readigrass are literally crawling with biscuit/drugstore beetles. The peaflakes have lots of tiny holes in them, like termites but food-based. They laid their eggs amongst the Readigrass too, lot's of nice premade hidey holes.

They must have hitched a ride in and the sudden increase in temperature encouraged their eggs to hatch. Everywhere I turn in the guinea pig room there are tens or more of them crawling on the floor... behind the curtains even. I've frantically hoovered the room and thrown out anything they might be hiding in (even my mealworm farm, sob) but I suspect I'm going to be dealing with this for a long time. Thank goodness they aren't dangerous to my piggies.

The only way to solve this problem is to store anything they might like to eat in airtight containers -- that includes pellets, peaflakes, and forage. The jury is out on whether they can consume hay, but I have literally no safe way to store that as they can bore through fabric and paper . Argh!

 

[Swissgreys]

Oh no - sounds like a nightmare.
Hopefully you can get it sorted soon.

 

[VickiA]

Oh no, poor you. That sounds like an absolute nightmare.

 

[Bill & Ted]

I'm the frugal sort, so I like to buy things in bulk. 20kg pea flakes here... 15 kg Readigrass there... 15kg bags of Harringtons. While we go through the pellets quickly enough, it has taken a couple of years to get through the rest.

Consider this a warning -- my peaflakes and Readigrass are literally crawling with biscuit/drugstore beetles. The peaflakes have lots of tiny holes in them, like termites but food-based. They laid their eggs amongst the Readigrass too, lot's of nice premade hidey holes.

They must have hitched a ride in and the sudden increase in temperature encouraged their eggs to hatch. Everywhere I turn in the guinea pig room there are tens or more of them crawling on the floor... behind the curtains even. I've frantically hoovered the room and thrown out anything they might be hiding in (even my mealworm farm, sob) but I suspect I'm going to be dealing with this for a long time. Thank goodness they aren't dangerous to my piggies.

The only way to solve this problem is to store anything they might like to eat in airtight containers -- that includes pellets, peaflakes, and forage. The jury is out on whether they can consume hay, but I have literally no safe way to store that as they can bore through fabric and paper . Argh!

Aw that sounds like a complete nightmare. I had a similar experience last year. We had bought a normal hay bale from our local Farm shop and started using it more or less straight away, but within a week I was seeing an odd small caterpillar climbing up the wall in the piggies room. My first thought was a butterfly must have somehow laid some eggs in the room somewhere but after a few days I noticed there was more and more. Every time I cleaned the piggies out the caterpillars would appear on the carpet, up the walls and then the “penny dropped” they were coming from the hay!
Had about three days of finding all the caterpillars, had to remove all the bedding from the granddaughters bunkbed, take the carpet up as they were all walking along the skirt boards it was horrid! and of course we had to chuck the hay bale away, our summerhouse were it was stored was crawling too!

 

[Black piggies]

I'm the frugal sort, so I like to buy things in bulk. 20kg pea flakes here... 15 kg Readigrass there... 15kg bags of Harringtons. While we go through the pellets quickly enough, it has taken a couple of years to get through the rest.

Consider this a warning -- my peaflakes and Readigrass are literally crawling with biscuit/drugstore beetles. The peaflakes have lots of tiny holes in them, like termites but food-based. They laid their eggs amongst the Readigrass too, lot's of nice premade hidey holes.

They must have hitched a ride in and the sudden increase in temperature encouraged their eggs to hatch. Everywhere I turn in the guinea pig room there are tens or more of them crawling on the floor... behind the curtains even. I've frantically hoovered the room and thrown out anything they might be hiding in (even my mealworm farm, sob) but I suspect I'm going to be dealing with this for a long time. Thank goodness they aren't dangerous to my piggies.

The only way to solve this problem is to store anything they might like to eat in airtight containers -- that includes pellets, peaflakes, and forage. The jury is out on whether they can consume hay, but I have literally no safe way to store that as they can bore through fabric and paper . Argh!

Oh my goodness, wish I hadn't clicked on that beetle link
Poor you and poor piggies!

 

[artcasper]

Oh no! Hope you get it sorted soon! Nightmare!

 

[Betsy]

Oh my goodness, wish I hadn't clicked on that beetle link

Same here I think I'm gonna have nightmares!

 

[rp1993]

Oh no! You can’t be too careful can you! I hope you can get on top of them soon! I must say after the pantry moths we had when we very first got the pigs (think it came from PAH nuggs) I am obessive over everything being in a seal container!