I usually feed the herd Cavy-lets from Nutritional Research Associates. They are based in Indiana I believe, but it might as well be on the moon since I'm in NY.

A breeder who lives about 75 miles from me buys a ton and then all the breeders in the region buy from her. We usually pick them up at shows. Unfortunately, personal obligations have made me miss the last couple shows, hence I ran very low on pellets.

I've checked our nearby Tractor Supply Company and their guinea pig pellets are all but covered in cobwebs. I had the manager read the Julian code for me last month. A couple bags were milled in January and some from November! I told him, well with pellets this old I might as well buy the fresher rabbit pellets. I said the Vitamin C in GP pellets, which makes them distinctive from rabbit pellets, quickly degrades and is probably gone within 3 months. He was suprised and said they were told the shelf life was 6 months on all feed. He also said there was no way to get a different brand or even fresher feed, that they sent him whatever.

BTW, we have no pet shops anywhere near, so that was out as an option.

Anyway, I again bought pellets at WalMart. While everyone loves to hate WalMart, they're just too handy sometimes with halfway decent stuff. I got a boatload of small plastic bags of pellets less than two months old at no greater price than the 50# bags of the good stuff.

I'm sure my pigs will be happy when I can finally get Cavy-lets again, though. They are smaller and harder with less fines and they even smell good to ME.