The Rural Voice, 1999-07, Page 22Making
it work
Chinchillas are
the key to the
economics of
Chesley farm
Story and photos
by Keith Rouston
Jn the midst of an early -June
heatwave, it's nice to go into
Gerald Golem's cool workplace
near Chesley. The building is air
conditioned because he wants to keep
the workers happy — and they're
wearing fur coats.
The workers are Golem's
chinchillas raised for their luxurious
fur. When you breed the animals to
have the thickest fur possible it
would be a dirty trick to play on them
to make them suffer through summer
heat, Golem says.
So Golem's 2,500 square foot
barn is well insulated and features a
heat exchanger and an air conditioner
to keep cooling costs to a minimum.
While their luxurious, by farm
standards, surroundings may seem
like a major investment, chinchillas
offer little expense aside from their
housing. Natives of high in South
America's Andes mountains,
chinchillas require little feed and
water. Each animal eats a spoonful
of pelleted feed a day as well as some
grass -based hay (rich alfalfa hay
would kill them). They also have a
very low requirement for water, all of
which means they produce very little
manure and the manure is very dry.
As a result the barn has a fresh, un -
barn -like smell.
Born and raised on a nearby farm,
Golem had a desire to farm but a
back -injury at his full-time job made
him look at forms of farming that
would require less strenuous activity.
18 THE RURAL VOICE
That brought to mind the interest he
had had in chinchillas since a visit he
had paid to a Paisley -area chinchilla
rancher.
The chinchillas are the largest
cash generator on the mixed farming
operation Gerald and his wife Mary
carry out on their original small
acreage plus his father's farm which
Gerald eventually bought. He has a
small flock of sheep with 25-30
ewes. He custom feeds cattle, taking
in calves in the winter and feeding
them, then putting them out on his
intensively -managed pasture in the
summer.
Still, he says of the 150 -acre
operation, "without the chinchillas
that's not enough acres to be viable.
Chinchillas don't require much of a
land -base nor do they require
machinery. They do like the country
where it's clean and quiet.
"It fits quite nicely in this area,"
Golem says of chinchilla production
in rural Ontario. "We're away from
the pollution and noise of the cities."
The climate also compares well to
the chinchilla's native area of South
America, though the weather here is
not quite so extreme.
The harshness of their native
climate gives chinchillas a 110 -day
gestation period, much longer than
other animals of similar size (a rabbit
is about 30 days). The long gestation
means babies can fend for themselves
nearly from birth. Their fur is fully
formed, their eyes are open and there
Gerald Golem says chinchillas help
make his mixed farm viable.
is no nesting period required. They
can eat solid food within a day.
"So there's very little work to do
in terms of littering or preparing for
the birthing like there is with other
species," Golem says.
This also allows for fostering
babies back and forth, Golem says.
Litters range from a rare single
young up to a rare four so it helps to
be able to even out the numbers if
there are litters of different sizes on
the same day. Usually all births take
place before 8 a.m.
Coupled with the fact chinchillas
have a long gestation period comes
another anomaly: they are able to
rebreed within 12 hours. It means
there are usually two litters per year
from each female with the odd one
giving a third litter. On average there
will be about four offspring per year
per breeding female.
It takes roughly 11 to 12 months
for an animal to grow Targe enough
and develop its prime coat, at which
time they are humanely killed and
their pelts taken.
While at the moment there are
only two possibilities for money
from raising chinchillas, pelts and
breeding stock, there is currently a
project in Quebec exploring the
possibility of shearing chinchillas for
their fur to be blended with other
fibres.