The study was done in the department of La Paz, providence of Ingavi in the community of Letanias (16° 39’ 15” S; 69° 60’ 18” W), in the Benson Institute building, located 3 kilometers from Viacha. The objectives were: to evaluate the growth and increase in weight and consumption of food in Guinea pig male and females under the effect of diets with different levels of barley sprout in the phases of growth; to determine the nutritional conversion; to determine the optimal level of use of the barley sprouts in the basic feeding of Guinea pigs; and to evaluate the results of the diets from the point of view of its economic efficiency. The diets utilized were isoprotein and isoenergetic and consisted of the following: D l (34% H. alfalfa + 33% P. barley + 33% bran), D-2 (45%H. alfalfa + 25% sprout + 14% P. barley + 16% bran), D-3 (35% H. alfalfa + 50% sprout + 12% P. barley + 3% bran), D-4 (22% H. alfalfa + 75% sprout + 2% P. barley + 1% bran). The design that I used was completely random with factorial arrangement, with four repetitions, taking into account 64 animals 32 male and 32 females. I analyzed the variables with the statistical package MSTATC obtaining the following results.- The analysis of variance obtained for the gaining and increasing of weight, I present differences in the phases of evaluation (sixth and eleventh week). Being D-2 the diet that presents greater weight with referring to the diets D l, D-2 and D-3. The consumption of food was greater in the diet D-2, showing greater flexibility than the diets D-2, D-3 and D-l. Analyzing the nutritional conversion index, weight, and economic relation it is concluded that the diet D-2 with 25% of barley sprout is the one that achieves the best behavior, achieving a good use of the goods that farmers have and the cost of feed is attainable for the producer. Barley sprouts can be an alternative feed for the guinea pig always as long as administered in low levels.

The cost of feeding has been pointed out as the most trascendet investment inside a guinea-pig production. The present work carries out with the purpose to determine and to quantify feeding costs, total costs of production and profitability of Tamborada and MEJOCUY guinea-pig populations. In the stage of suckling period, breed and gestation, experimental station and field. The result of feeding cost was 0.05 and 0.03 $US in suckling period (14 days) for Tamborada and MEJOCUY population, in breeding (42 days) it was 0.14 $US in both populations and in gestation (67 days), it was 0.42 and 0.40 $US. In field for breeding it was 0.07 $US and in gestation it was 0.11 $US. According to the Feeding cost, the MEJOCUY population has bigger technical profitability than Tamborada, the results show a positive and high utility that indicates that the upbringing of guinea pigs is profitable.

This study occurred during July, August, and September in the Small Animals Investigation and Production Center (CIPAM), dependent of the Faculty of Agricultural, Livestock, and Veterinary Sciences of the Technical University of Oruro, of the Central Highland of Bolivia. In order to satisfy guinea pig nutrition requirements, which are 2800.00 kcal/kg of energy, 18.00% protein, 10.00% fiber, 1.00% calcium, and 0.60% phosphorus, the following ingredients were used in feed: 11.30% yellow corn, 30.00% milled wheat [Bromus catharticus], 14.00% soy cake, 32.00% wheat bran, 9.00% alfalfa flour, 1.80% bone flour, 1.00% conchilla, 0.50% common salt, and 0.40% methionine. The effect that vitamin C deficiency causes is scurvy, with 100% mortality of guinea pigs at 28 days without green forage. This investigation was made with supplementation of canahua, wheat, and soybean sprouts in the growth stage with the object of replacing green forage in winter by presenting vitamin C. Canihua sprouts at 8 days gave a maximum of 6.28mg of vitamin C /100g of sample, and wheat sprouts at 8 days gave a maximum of 16.09mg of vitamin C/100g of sample. Soybean sprouts at 13 days reached 21.41mg of vitamin C /100g of sample, which continued to increase, but one should be warned that maintaining sprouts of this species is expensive. Rations consisted of 90.00g of sprouts plus 72.00g of feed per guinea pig, with the oral administration of 12.98mg of vitamin C in water solution per guinea pig used in the area. The reason is the improvement in guinea pig meat production with high protein content (20.30%), compared to cattle (17.50%) and sheep (14.50%), and the lower cholesterol of guinea pig (7.80%) compared to cattle (21.80%) and sheep (37.80%), and at a lower cost, with organic sprouts of high nutritional value. The canahua-soybean sprout treatment with 45% dry matter, 5.73% ash, 7.03% ether extract, 25.50% protein, 6.85% raw fiber, and 51.58% free nitrogen extract at 64 days of winter growth showed a live weight gain of 437.73g in relation to pure feed of 66.05% dry matter, 7.33% ash, 2.83% ether abstract, 19.51% raw protein, 7.52% raw fiber, and 56.46% free nitrogen extract with 359.23g. The difference is 78.50g, which is significant at 0.05 with a t-test. The result indicates that the canahua-soybean interaction is the best for live weight gain at 64 days of growth with respect to normal feed, for which the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis accepted. The live weight gain by sex in guinea pigs at 48 and 64 days of growth was highly significant, in females from 206.67g (4.3g/day) to 303.29g (4.74g/day) and in males from 262.27g (5.46g/day) to 392.27g (6.13g/day), with differences between males and females of 55.6 and 89g. These results show that male guinea pigs generally gain more weight than females during growth, which could be commercialized in the opportune moment. The food conversion between sexes fed with the different sprouts at 64 days of growth was 9.55 in females and 7.62 in males, a difference of 1.90. Also, the sex-soybean interaction in females with soybean was 10.31 and in males with soybean 6.79, a difference of 3.52, which is significant at 0.01. Similarly, the food conversion at 64 days of treatment by canahua sprouts and a feed with 41.34% dry matter, 5.69% ash, 3.47% ether extract, 20.58% raw protein, 8.04% raw fiber, and 56.25% free nitrogen extract is 7.90. In relation to just the feed it is 9.20, with a difference of 1.30. In a t-test this is significant at 0.05. These results show that male guinea pigs eat less food and grow more than females under the same conditions. The lowest production cost was obtained with canahua-feed interaction, in females Bs4.0/guinea pig (US$0.501) and in males Bs3.9/guinea pig (US$0.488). Canahua-soybean interaction yielded Bs5.50/guinea pig (US$0.689) for females and Bs5.50/guinea pig (US$0.689) for males. Normal feed yielded Bs4.20/guinea pig (US$0.526) for females and Bs5.40/guinea pig (US$0.676) for males. (US$1 = Bs7.98). Also, there was a percentage variation for the canahua-soybean-feed interaction in females of 5.00% lower than just feed and in males 27.80% lower than just feed. These results show that it is best to use canahua sprouts plus feed because this gives the lowest costs of feeding growing guinea pigs in winter.