Chuffnut Cavies - Australian Cavy Sanctuary Melbourne Shelter

10/04/2025

If you are looking for suitable guinea pig cages and products, please check out The General Pet Store - they are having a huge warehouse sale at the moment. Crazy cheap prices and a fabulous business to support.

02/04/2025

So true

It has come to our attention that cavy shows/breeders are offering Guinea pigs for “adoption” for our supporters I would like to teach you the difference…

Just because the word adoption is thrown about does it really mean that is what is happening?

If so, they will provide the left column. If not it would be more of a purchase.

In summary, while both adopting and purchasing involve bringing an animal into your home, they differ significantly in terms of financial implications, impact on animal welfare, availability of information about the animal’s background, and contributions toward addressing pet overpopulation issues.

*While we do cover veterinary bills post adoption, we must be at fault and please contact us first for our vets details.

21/03/2025

3rd UPDATE:
A third litter has been born - a single chunky bubba. There are still a number of girls expected to be pregnant, although a lot of the 44 that came in are actually very young themselves so hopefully won't be pregnant. They will still need to be on pregnancy watch though.

The Foster Care Information Pack is now available on our website:
https://www.australiancavysanctuary.org/enquire-to-foster
2ND UPDATE:
Yet another girl has stress-birthed 2 tiny but healthy bubbas. The mum is only a baby herself. The girls are currently out on the grass and will be bathed once the day has warmed up a little more. They are all filthy 😞

UPDATE:
Thank you to so MANY wonderful people for offers to foster. We collected the girls late on Saturday and will process them all tomorrow (medical check, bath, mite treatment) on Sunday. We will also upload the foster carer info pack (sorry, we have been super flat out preparing for these girls to come in and haven't been online much). Please bear with us as we are currently a 1-person team, so we haven't had a chance to reply to all your wonderful messages offering assistance - it is now 12.35am, and I am going to get some sleep, so hope to reply to a few messages tomorrow (Sunday).

Once we get all the girls processed, we will go through foster offers to match piggies with homes, and get them out to people over then next week to 10 days (maybe 2 weeks for those in Bendigo and Kyneton).

The stress of being rescued, then transported to us, has caused one sweet girl to give birth a little prematurely. Her 4 babies are tiny, and one sadly didn't survive the birth 😞 Mumma was a bit stressed, too, but she and her three tiny babies seem to be doing better about 3 hours after the birth. Will post photos in the comments.

DESPERATE FOR FOSTER CARERS IN THE GREATER MELBOURNE AREA:
Two massive surrenders/rescues have come our way - a total of 64 guinea pigs (which includes 44 females, all possibly pregnant) - have been collected, and the 44 females will soon be making their way to Chuffnut.

But we desperately need some foster homes for these pregnant ladies as they will need some one-on-one care while they go through their pregnancies and weaning of their bubs.

So, if you have ever considered fostering guinea pigs and possibly even foster-to-adopt, please reach out to Chuffnut. We will upload a foster carer information kit to our website shortly. Or you can message us for the kit.

If needed, we can supply some cages, pellet food, and hay, if you are able to supply the vegies and maybe some grass. Please, though, we can probably only manage foster homes that are in the Greater Melbourne area as country locations may be too difficult to manage :(

25/01/2025

Chuffnut is running some adoptions tomorrow Sunday 26/1/24. If anyone is interested, please pop in your adoption enquiries today and we will do our best to process them urgently!!
Looking forward to meeting some more piggy peeps :)

13/08/2024

A massive shout-out to several wonderful organisations/businesses/traders who offer ongoing support to Chuffnut Rescue.

Top of the list is the awesome The General Pet Store, who not only donate a part of their profits to various rescues, including Chuffnut, but they also help us to buy bedding and pellets at cheaper rates, and also donate various close to use-by date products. This week, we received a heaps of piggy pellets - Oxbow and Science Selective!! These awesome pellets help our oldies, sickies and pregnant piggies

17/07/2024

REHOMING CHALLENGE to celebrate Guinea Pig Appreciation Day today!!!

Chuffnut is setting themselves, and all prospective adoptive homes, a massive challenge.

We want to rehome up to 60 guinea pigs within 6 weeks! We are planning to start this challenge on on the weekend of July 20th/21st 2024, ending on the weekend of August 31st/Sept 1st 2024.

Our record for the number of adopted guinera pigs in one adoption event is 16, which was achieved pre-COVID, over a 4 hour adoption event. Can we smash this record to pieces?

Have you ever considered bringing guinea pigs into your home? Do you have some guinea pigs and would like to add more to your little herd? Are you ready to adopt now, or will you be ready in the next 4-6 weeks time?

If you have answered YES to these questions, or would like to reach out to us to chat about this possiblity further, then consider some Chuffnut piggies as your next family additions. All of our animals are health checked, nail-clipped and treated against mites, lice, fungal. They also come with a 100% money-back guarantee! If you can no longer keep your Chuffnut piggies, no matter the reason, we ask that they are returned to the shelter and you will have100% of your adoption fees reimbursed.

Pop over to our website and fill in our no-committment expression-of-interest Online Adoption Enquiry Form www.australianvcavysanctuary.org and any questions can be sent to us at [email protected].

23/05/2024

ADOPTION DAY ON SUNDAY 26th MAY:
https://www.australiancavysanctuary.org/adoption-days

Well, adoption day is fast approaching, and we only have another day to process and approve adoption enquiries. If you are keen to adopt, or have already enquired to adopt but haven't yet heard back from us, please contact us today, and we will get right on it. We will send you the adoption day details too - it will be held in Bundoora on Sunday.

Best to email us at [email protected] so we don't miss it. FB seems to like hiding messages and we find them months later :(

21/05/2024

REPUTABLE GUINEA PIG RESCUES IN AUSTRALIA

We will be building this list in coming weeks. If you know of any rescues, please message us (do not comment on this post as we would prefer to make contact with rescues that we are not familiar with so we can chat about them becoming endorsed by AGPRN).

QUEENSLAND:
* QLD Guinea Pig Refuge
* Gold Coast Guinea Pig Rescue Inc
* Cavy Angel's Guinea Pig Rescue Inc
* Miss Piggys Guinea Pig Lair Inc.
* Porsche's Rescue
* Toowoomba Guinea Pig Rescue
* Alittlebitiffy Animal Sanctuary
* The Fox Residence Animal Sanctuary
* Brisbane Southside Guinea Pig Sanctuary

NEW SOUTH WALES:
* Cavy Central Guinea Pig Rescue ( ACS Sydney)
*Liberty Foundation

VICTORIA:
* Chuffnut Cavies - Australian Cavy Sanctuary Melbourne Shelter
* Oscar’s Rescue - Guinea Pig Sanctuary - VIC
* Lort Smith Adoption Centre (multi-species but do take guinea pigs https://www.facebook.com/lortsmithhospital
* Australian Animal Protection Society (multi-species but have a dedicated small animal unit https://www.facebook.com/AAPSBunspigs
* Freedom for Farmed Rabbits (a rabbit rescue but have been known to take in guinea pigs) https://www.facebook.com/FreedomFarmedRabbits
* Beary Fuzzy Forever Rescue (multi-species but do occasionally take guinea pigs)

TASMANIA:

SOUTH AUSTRALIA:
Guinea Pig Rescue and Rehoming Adelaide https://www.facebook.com/groups/guineapigrescueadl/

WESTERN AUSTRALIA:
* Romeo's Rabbit Rescue (Rabbit rescue that takes in some bunnies. Rehoming standards for buns is great, unsure about guinea pigs, so AGPRN will open communications with this shelter) https://romeosrabbitrescue.com.au

ACT:

While we would love to present a list of suspect "rescues", this may prove difficult. It would be safest to contact your listed reputable shelters for your adoption and surrendering needs as they may be able to refer to you to other rescues that they trust if they, themselves, are not able to assist you.

Please support these legitimate rescues. They are all working hard to provide better outcomes for guinea pigs across Australia, even though some may not have a massive social media presence. Every one of these shelters has animal welfare as the underlying reason for their existence - profit making and pet flipping is not their primary concern. Yes, they will all be in need of financial and physical assistance, so donations and offers for volunteering or fostering will always be welcomed. But selling (flipping) an animal just to make a "sale" is never something a legitimate shelter will do.

Quoting high rehoming rates will always bring into question how careful a so-called shelter is screening the adoptive homes, to ensure that the animals do not end up in a situation that is as bad - or worse - that the situations many have come from.

Please offer your support for those shelters that are in existence for the benefit of the guine pigs, not for them benefit of themselves or their "popularity".

If you have any questions about "shelters" that might not be listed here, please contact us privately as we may have further information to assist you when you choose to support a rescue shelter.

09/05/2024

We will be watching this post very closely...too many non-geniune "rescues" out there at the moment. Social media means you can write whatever you want to write, and people are likely to believe it. But the proof is really in the pudding... How long has the rescue been running? What is their knowledge of the animals they are rescuing? Are the genuinly rehoming to fabulous homes or are they simply "pet flipping"? Do they take their animals to vets? Are they genuinly doing what they can to help animals or are they spending MORE time worrying about their social media content or asking for endless donations? Worth keeping an eye on the Australian Guinea Pig Rescue Network page for updates.

04/05/2024

ADOPTION DAYS:
We have revamped our website to list upcoming adoption days for the rest of the year.
We can also arrange other days to suit adoptive homes if we have enough interest - we are just trying to lock in at least some dates to give our prospective homes some certainty.

09/02/2024

ADOPTION DAY tomorrow Saturday 10th Feb. Greensborough/Bundoora area

Sorry for late notice. If anyone wishes to adopt some lovely piggies tomorrow morning, please pop over to our website and fill in the online adoption enquiry form australiancavysanctuary.org and send us some pics of your piggy cage/setup to [email protected].

If you have already applied in the past and still wish to adopt, please send us an email to [email protected] or [email protected] and I will do my utmost to get the enquiries processed tonight and send you the details on where and when to meet.

If I get swamped with requests and can't possibly wade through them all (unlikley LOL), I will arrange another adoption day in the next 1-2 weeks, or arrange a one-on-one adoption for you in your home.

06/01/2024

Every year, the Guinea Pig Secret Santa Project coordinates an immense program linking kind donors to guinea pig rescues around the world