squeaker_lover
New Born Pup
I apologize in advance for the long post I just want to thoroughly explain my situation.
So first of all here's some background. I adopted two guinea pigs from Pet Smart! Yes I know, bad idea, but I now know never to get pets from there and once I found out that it was bad I looked for local rescues and the nearest ones were cities away! Anyways, I bought them mid February along with a MidWest cage and bunch of toys, treats, hides. I choose the guinea pigs that were already caged together at the store because I thought that they would already be used to being with each other. I named these two piggies Heidi and Mei and they are my beautiful baby girls! Also when I got home I checked to make sure the gender I was told was correct. Anyways, a month later I expanded and connected their cage with c&c and it is now 2ft by 8ft with an upper level that 1ft by 5ft (I spoiled them like crazy because they deserve to be <3). I ordered the grids and chloroplast online and built the extension myself.
Before the new cage, Heidi and Mei had been getting along just fine. They were always popcorning and running around squeaking whenever I brought them their favorite veggies. They would lay together, eat together and do everything together so i'm assuming that means they were bonded. Heidi is just a little bit larger than Mei. I wasn't givin an exact age but based on their size I'm assuming Heidi is now 6 or 7 months and Mei is 5 or 6 months. Sometimes Heidi will seem annoyed with Mei because Mei will try to play with her and I think heidi just wants to nap haha but It was never anything bad.
Now here comes where I think I have messed up. A couple of days before I knew the cage supplied were supposed to arrive, I scheduled a day to pick up a new piggy(from someone off of creigslist this time) to join the heard! I named her Penny <3 So It came in the mail and I set Heidi and Mei in there. They were only in there for one day and then I brought penny home. First I had separated one end of the cage for Penny to stay in for a week so they could all learn each others sents, make sure she wasn't sickand get settled in to their new environments. After that week I removed the board separating them and sat with them for a few hours to make sure nothing went wrong. During the meeting they were sniffing each other, and there was some rumplstrutting and following happening but no fighting. Penny and Mei were popcorning and playing together so that made me feel better. I figured I was ok for them to be together and everything was fine. Through the next couple of days, it had seemed like Heidi and Penny did not get along at all. There were showing teeth to each other and chattering. Then I saw that penny would sometimes lung at Heidi! I wasn't sure what to do at that point. In those days I'm pretty sure Penny was bullying her and I did not want that happening anymore. Heidi was getting chased around and bullied so much that she would squeak whenever Penny got too close! Enough was enough so I separated Heidi from the other two. I figured that because she didn't care about playing with Mei too much then I could keep Mei and Penny together who had seemed to become new best buddies.
After a few days of the separation I put Heidi back to see if the problem was resolved and boy was I wrong. As soon as Penny saw that the wall was gone she went strait for Heidi and started lunging and nipping her so I put the wall back up. I've had Heidi separated until today. She seemed fine and content by herself. I don't want her to stay like this for very long because I know that guinea pigs are meant to be together and not alone like this. In between the wall there is also a grid piece so they can still see each other and sniff each other. Sometimes Heidi and Penny both lay against the grid at the same time and will sleep there together. I wasn't sure If this meant that they both just liked these spots or that they were ok with each other now. Earlier today I tried putting them together again to see how they would react.
When I put them back together they seemed to not care at first. After a couple minutes is when the fighting began. This time however, it was Heidi who was starting the fight and it was not only towards Penny but now towards Mei as well. This fight however was more vicious than any other event. Heidi was attacking Penny and trying to bite her and then was nibbling Mei whenever she got close. I immediately grabbed the towel that was already in my lap and stopped the small fight before it escalated. Heidi is now by herself yet again and even popcorned just once when she was back by herself.
It breaks my heart knowing that shes all by herself and I feel as if I don't have enough time to give her any extra special attention that she would need in order to just keep her separated for the rest of her life with me. I have no idea what to do at this point.
So first of all here's some background. I adopted two guinea pigs from Pet Smart! Yes I know, bad idea, but I now know never to get pets from there and once I found out that it was bad I looked for local rescues and the nearest ones were cities away! Anyways, I bought them mid February along with a MidWest cage and bunch of toys, treats, hides. I choose the guinea pigs that were already caged together at the store because I thought that they would already be used to being with each other. I named these two piggies Heidi and Mei and they are my beautiful baby girls! Also when I got home I checked to make sure the gender I was told was correct. Anyways, a month later I expanded and connected their cage with c&c and it is now 2ft by 8ft with an upper level that 1ft by 5ft (I spoiled them like crazy because they deserve to be <3). I ordered the grids and chloroplast online and built the extension myself.
Before the new cage, Heidi and Mei had been getting along just fine. They were always popcorning and running around squeaking whenever I brought them their favorite veggies. They would lay together, eat together and do everything together so i'm assuming that means they were bonded. Heidi is just a little bit larger than Mei. I wasn't givin an exact age but based on their size I'm assuming Heidi is now 6 or 7 months and Mei is 5 or 6 months. Sometimes Heidi will seem annoyed with Mei because Mei will try to play with her and I think heidi just wants to nap haha but It was never anything bad.
Now here comes where I think I have messed up. A couple of days before I knew the cage supplied were supposed to arrive, I scheduled a day to pick up a new piggy(from someone off of creigslist this time) to join the heard! I named her Penny <3 So It came in the mail and I set Heidi and Mei in there. They were only in there for one day and then I brought penny home. First I had separated one end of the cage for Penny to stay in for a week so they could all learn each others sents, make sure she wasn't sickand get settled in to their new environments. After that week I removed the board separating them and sat with them for a few hours to make sure nothing went wrong. During the meeting they were sniffing each other, and there was some rumplstrutting and following happening but no fighting. Penny and Mei were popcorning and playing together so that made me feel better. I figured I was ok for them to be together and everything was fine. Through the next couple of days, it had seemed like Heidi and Penny did not get along at all. There were showing teeth to each other and chattering. Then I saw that penny would sometimes lung at Heidi! I wasn't sure what to do at that point. In those days I'm pretty sure Penny was bullying her and I did not want that happening anymore. Heidi was getting chased around and bullied so much that she would squeak whenever Penny got too close! Enough was enough so I separated Heidi from the other two. I figured that because she didn't care about playing with Mei too much then I could keep Mei and Penny together who had seemed to become new best buddies.
After a few days of the separation I put Heidi back to see if the problem was resolved and boy was I wrong. As soon as Penny saw that the wall was gone she went strait for Heidi and started lunging and nipping her so I put the wall back up. I've had Heidi separated until today. She seemed fine and content by herself. I don't want her to stay like this for very long because I know that guinea pigs are meant to be together and not alone like this. In between the wall there is also a grid piece so they can still see each other and sniff each other. Sometimes Heidi and Penny both lay against the grid at the same time and will sleep there together. I wasn't sure If this meant that they both just liked these spots or that they were ok with each other now. Earlier today I tried putting them together again to see how they would react.
When I put them back together they seemed to not care at first. After a couple minutes is when the fighting began. This time however, it was Heidi who was starting the fight and it was not only towards Penny but now towards Mei as well. This fight however was more vicious than any other event. Heidi was attacking Penny and trying to bite her and then was nibbling Mei whenever she got close. I immediately grabbed the towel that was already in my lap and stopped the small fight before it escalated. Heidi is now by herself yet again and even popcorned just once when she was back by herself.
It breaks my heart knowing that shes all by herself and I feel as if I don't have enough time to give her any extra special attention that she would need in order to just keep her separated for the rest of her life with me. I have no idea what to do at this point.
