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Hello From Leicestershire

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kittyfalol

New Born Pup
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Leicestershire
Hi, I've been lurking for a while, so I thought it was about time that I introduced myself.
We bought a couple of female guinea pigs for our daughter before Christmas. Well I seem to spend more time cuddling and caring and cooing over them, but we tell her that they're hers ;-)
They're called Charm and Eevee and they're incredibly skittish and still very scared of us.

There seems to be mixed advice about taming them, is it better to try to pick them up, even thought they quite clearly don't want to be, or is it better to wait and hand feed them until they're less scared of us?

I also strongly suspect that one of the girls is pregnant. She's significantly bigger than the other ad her tummy seems to be getting larger by the day. I think it must have happened before the pet shop received them.

guinea pig in a hay cuddle sack.JPG

possibly pregnant guinea pig.JPG

Perspex front corner guinea pig cage.JPG

Guinea pig hiding under hayloft.JPG
 
Hello :) Lovely to see you emerge from the shadows :) - I lurked for ages before joining. But it is nice to be able to participate fully in the forum and the majority of people on here don't bite :)) apart from Bosshogg... :)

Charm and Eevee are gorgeous :love:

Yeah, there is often conflicting advice we started like this - we offered food in the cage and hopefully after time they will take it off you - Food is the best way to bribe, use food when you get round to lap times also. I would adviseStart lap time for a short amount of time at first and build up. We started off we lap-times for 1 minute with new piggies then pop them back, slowly increasing the time. They will soon associate you with food and good things but at first it takes a while to gain their trust.

As for picking up this can often stress piggies as they are prey animals they really don't like being picked up - it goes against all instincts. Maybe try techniques in the video below

Pet shop piggies can often be pregnant, I would advise getting the vet to confirm this. We can help with advice in our Pregnancy section as we have some experienced members monitoring that particular section

I do hope you enjoy the forum, welcome and if you have any questions please just ask

Lee
 
Hi and welcome

if you are worried about a potential pregnancy, please open an ongoing support thread in our Pregnancy section. Can you please add how old your girl is, her background and how long you have had her, so we have the relevant information all together in case we need to refer back. You can find detailed guides for owners with an unplanned pregnancy at the top of the section that cover the whole period. Pay attention to a good general diet to maximise your chances of all going well - and incidentally, it won't hurt one bit if your girl doesn't turn out to be pregnant!
https://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/forums/pregnancy-baby-care-and-sexing-no-breeding.11/
Recommendations For A Balanced General Guinea Pig Diet

As to handling: it depends on how you want your relationship to work out. If your main aim is just have a cuddle pet, then handle from the beginning. If you want a more two-sided interactive relationship, then it is worth taking your time and giving your piggies the opportunity to build up trust and to communicate with you before you start handling in earnest. Use piggy body language to achieve that - but it means that you have to take things at their pace at first, but in my experience, you get more out of it later on.
How To Understand Guinea Pig Instincts And Speak Piggy Body Language
 
Thank you everybody for your replies! Sorry for the abrupt ending to my post - I was having problems editing my photos and needed to rush out to pick my daughter up from school.

That's all really helpful, thank you.
 
Hello and a warm welcome to you and the girls. Lovely set up. Lucky piggies. As suggested by @Wiebke please have the girls vet checked for pregnancy. Look forward to hearing more.
 
Hello and a warm welcome to you and the girls. Lovely set up. Lucky piggies. As suggested by @Wiebke please have the girls vet checked for pregnancy. Look forward to hearing more.

Thank you, I spoke to the pet shop. I've always had a lot of trust in them and have always had much healthier fish from there than our local p@h. They're very confident about their sexing and knowledgeable about guinea pigs. They weren't willing to pay for a vet visit as they said there was "no need", but they did give me lots of advice on looking after them in case she is pregnant. He wasn't overly surprised though, he just said that the breeder probably didn't separate them early enough...
 
Hello and welcome to the forum. I'm based in Leicester :)

Sorry to hear of the pregnancy concerns, it seems to happen far too regularly with pet shops and obviously they can't control what their breeders do.
 
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