Feeding older and younger guinea pigs together

Chloe Anna

Chloe Anna

New Born Pup
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I'm not sure if this is in the right category. I've put it in food but if it should go in baby care please move it. I adopted an 8 week old sow today as a cagemate for my recently bereaved 19 month old sow. Bonding went great and they're getting on like a house on fire. The older sow (Moss) was a breeder before she was surrendered to the rescue I adopted her from and it seems her mothering tendencies are coming out. I would have preferred to rescue a new pig closer to her age but the only rescue near me that has older or non-pregnant sows isn't open for adoptions at the moment and Moss was getting so lonely after a week and a half with no cagemate.

I wanted to ask about feeding the young sow. When I've had young pigs in the past I've always given them free access to junior pellets and alfalfa but, as she's in with an 19 month old, I'm not sure what to do. I know she needs extra calcium at this age but I'm worried that if I give her high-calcium alfalfa then the older sow will eat too much of it. She's too nervous to eat outside of the cage at the moment so letting her graze away from the older girl isn't really an option. Her previous owner gives their pigs haylage instead of hay but I'm fairly sure that's not recommended anyway, even though it's supposed to be higher in calcium than hay. I use timothy hay and the young sow has eaten some already. Would putting alfalfa in for a couple of months be dangerous to the older sow in terms of bladder stones and weight gain? Moss has low calcium veg but with a couple of spinach leaves or a sprig of kale once or twice a week.

At the moment, the young sow is absolutely loving the adult nuggets Moss eats (Burgess with mint). I put a bowl of her changeover food (Allen & Page muesli 😕 ) mixed with the nuggets but she completely ignored it and was far more interested in the bowl of plain nuggets. My older sow went straight for the muesli mix, however, so I'm not too keen on putting it in with them. Would it be alright to go cold turkey on the muesli mix and just give her the nuggets? I think Moss' might just eat all the muesli herself anyway. She's tried lots of veggies and had plenty of grass at her previous home so her gut's developing well - is it likely that she could handle a complete change?

She does seem underweight/undersized for 8 weeks. She's around 200g (I think my scales are on the blink so can't be 100% certain but I'm going to pick up new ones in the next few days) but has a good body condition score with no prominent ribs. She does look more like a 5-6 week old than an 8 week old in her face and feet. How can I get her weight up without overfeeding my older sow? I have put a big bowl of nuggets in (Moss doesn't tend to overeat if there's more than her normal ration) but I'm not sure if adult nuggets will be enough to get the young sow's weight up. I'm working on getting her to hand-feed at the moment but she only seems to eat when Moss is around, which is a real struggle.

Any advice you can give would be massively appreciated, thank you!
 
i see the difficulty you face. First thing is please stop feeding the muesli. It leads to selective feeding, and is not recommended for piggies. So just have her on whatever pellets Moss eats. I admit I didn’t feed the boys alfalfa or anything like that (They were 2 months old when I got them).

If you’ve felt the heft and she doesn’t feel small then I think she’ll be ok. Was she born while in the previous owner’s care? Seems rather a low weight for her age. As comparison, the boys were 450-500g at just over 2 months. And he girls were around 500g at 3 months. Maybe she was the runt of the litter?

Weigh her with the new scales and see. Also weigh her weekly to track her weight. And you can always take her to a (cavy savvy) vet for a general check up. I’m sure they’d be able to tell you if she’s ok weight wise or not.

Anyway, someone will be along in the morning with more comprehensive information for you.
 
Velvet had her 3 pups here (shop pregnancy) and I never changed the food for the babies, they just had pellets and meadow hay like Velvet did and veg, obviously. They are all I the peak of health.
 
I tend to agree with @Betsy
I also never changed anything when I added a youngster in with my older piggies.
As long as you are offering a decent nugget, unlimited hay and a reasonable portion of fresh veg every day then she will be fine.
If she is a little underweight then with the correct diet this will resolve itself over time.
 
I've introduced younger pigs to older pigs several times and have always just put them onto the diet that the older pig was on (which was timothy based, not alfalfa based.) If you want to supplement with some alfalfa, I would offer her some to munch on during lap time or something like that. All of my baby pigs did fine on that diet.
 
The babies that I've taken in have just had the same food as the older piggies. No special junior pellets or anything. I wouldn't worry about her weight if the heft is good. Poppy was small for her age and only 210g when I first got her at 6 weeks and now she's my second heaviest pig at over 1200g and just over a year old!
 
Yes I agree with all the above posts too, a balanced adult diet should be fine, especially as young piggies learn what to eat from the adults- she's more likely to gain a healthy amount of weight and eat a wider variety of healthy foods by copying what her companion eats than by eating alone!
We've adopted both 2 super obese piggies and an underweight piggy and with a few weeks of a regular healthy diet they'd all reached a normal healthy weight, our underweight piggy who had teeth issues and arrived weighing less than 800g as an adult now weighs about the same as our slimmed down fat ladies! And our baby skinny pig (who we were told would need a specialist high calorie diet, which we didnt believe) is also growing to a very respectable weight and heft. All eating exactly the same diet :)
 
I'm with everyone else, I've never fed babies anything different than the older pigs. A good quality nugget a mix of timothy and meadow hay, grass and a small selection of veg/garden weeds.
 
Thank you all so much for your replies, you've put my mind at ease! She's eating plenty of adult nuggets, timothy hay, and veggies. She's also drinking plenty of water now I've made a freestanding bottle holder (I think the normal bottles were too high). As soon as this rubbish weather clears up she'll be out on the grass too.

This is the little lady. I don't have a name yet but I'm thinking possibly Fern or Heather to go with Moss?

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She is adorable. Abys and Abyruvians are my favourite breeds, I love all that wild hair.
 
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