Lonely guinea pig..

cherrycool

I have a guinea pig that used to have a rabbit for company, but unfortunately the rabbit passed on. We never got another guinea pig, but a friend recently told me that guinea pigs should never, ever be kept alone as they become very miserable. I was considering getting another for company, but my guinea pig has been alone for almost a year now, is it too late at this point? Would he just try to defend its territory or something now?
Any advice is greatly appreciated!

cherrycool

Anything?!

Bainne2

Yes Guinea-pigs are much better in pairs, they thrive on social company. You will be able to introduce another boar to your guy!:D

I could go into it in detail here but it is easier for you to read the info on www.barmy4boars.co.uk ( go into boar options) then for me to repeat everything and probally leave something out.

If you have any other questions just post again here or send me a pm.

Be carefull though if you are buying a boar from a petstore (I don not advise this) that they can tell the sexes apart as I have often gotten missexed piggies form petstores across the country and even had to teaach someone working in one how do do it and that was when I was 13!!!!!!!:eek:

I know a person who rescues male piggies (very handsome fellas) and I can give you her contact details if you want;) Just let me know!!!

Demonique

Just make sure your male is actually a male before introducing another male. Otherwise you could end up with guinea piglets.

We didn't realise guinea sows can get pregnant within minutes of giving birth and didn't seperate her from the male before the birth. Mother and baby were seperated when the babies were discovered (three dead, one live) and went back out with the male when Gurrier was 6 weeks old, two weeks later we discovered two dead baby guineas in the shed.
The lady at our local petshop said they can get pregnant soon after giving birth and because we didn't even know about her second pregnancy she hadn't been seperated and we realised she was probably pregnant YET AGAIN!

It became obvious she was after a few weeks and we seperated her from the male and Easter that year she had two large babies that were twice the size of her first litter.

The female went back out with the male when the babies were sold at 8 weeks old. In June that year I went to the US on the JI scheme and in July my parents phoned and said the female had four babies (and of course they didn't seperate her from the male, the idiots!).
I came home early from the US (not on account of the piggies I might add) before the birth of the next litter (two months after the birth of the summer batch). She had three lovely little babies, two of which she killed when she was a month old. When we found them she was running angrily from the third baby who was pestering her. We picked her up and to our horror discovered she was severly underweight (we hadn't been handling her because we didn't want to stress her). We had been filling her food bowl twice a day because the food was disappearing and thought she was eating it. We then realised that it had been the babies who were eating most of the food and also suckling off her. She had been lovely and fat before she gave birth to them. The babies had been eating the food that was meant for her and also taking away from her by suckling off her and she'd killed them because they were killing her.

We separated mother and baby and it took two months before the female was back up to an acceptable weight. The baby was fine despite being taken away at a young age.

To anyone who's breeding piggies make sure to separate the male from the female before the birth to space out the births and handle the female on a regular basis when she has basis to ensure she's an acceptable weight.

cherrycool

Sorry for the late reply, but thanks for the help guys, that website in particular was very helpful, I think we're going to get wee Georgie a friend!