Morning all!
Apologies for the confusing title but that's the question in a nutshell, I promise I'll try keep it short and sweet! Myself and partner have had guinea pigs previously and a couple of weeks ago decided when we saw a poor little piggy (Lulu) on her own in a local pet store that we'd take her home, we then got two more sows (Tanya and Barbara) to keep her company, however after a few weeks we realised that little Barbara must have been pregnant when we got her! She gave birth to four healthy pups three weeks ago today, there was one smaller than the others but after extra time with Babs and a little spoon feeding is now bouncing around with the rest. We've quadruple checked a few times and all the pups are female, now the question. I've only ever had boars before, never females so is separation necessary after four weeks and if so when OR can I reintroduce them at some point in the future as they are all female?
Hi and welcome
Baby girls:
Baby girls can simply stay on with their sow group and any neutered boars as there is no risk of pregnancies and as they are wired to do a a species.
They are going to be emphatically and rather roughly put at the bottom of the group hierarchy once the special protection they (and their mothers) enjoy during nursing. This usually from 3 weeks onward and is at its most intense around week 4. You have to sit that out. Babies are extremely vocal and dramatic but also far too agile to come to any harm.
You can find some videos in the baby intro chapter as well as in the general bonding sections in our bonding guide:
Bonding and Interaction: Illustrated social behaviours and bonding dynamics
Make sure that you have only got hides with 2 exits and ideally sprinkle feed the ca. 50g/1 small bowl of preferably green veg and the 1 tablespoon of pellets per piggy per day so the babies cannot be pushed off. In a group, you can feed an extra portion to keep the greedy guts busy while the bottom ranker have more of a chance of eating a regular portion. Also ensure that the babies cannot be blocked from accessing hay (which makes around 80% of the daily food intake and is what both dental growth rate and the whole digestive system are laid out for) and water; ideally you have more than one of both of these in different places.
Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets
Please make sure that all your piggies are well protected against the increasing summer heat. Pregnant and nursing sows as well as babies are at a higher risk of suffering heat exhaustion or heat stroke; especially in view of the current extreme weather warning for Northern Ireland until tomorrow evening, which is also relevant for you.
Hot Weather Management, Heat Strokes and Fly Strike
Baby boar rules (yours are not quite correct on this):
It is only the baby boars, which need to be removed
by 3 weeks or 250g of weight - whichever happens sooner.
The earliest documented sibling pregnancy is 24 days and mother/well developed son pregnancies can happen occasionally happen when mother (or any other sow in the cage) come into season again for the second time after giving birth around day 16 or 17; hence why have introduced the weight qualifier.
Any boar below 200g can safely stay on for another week or 250g - whichever happens first during that one week. We haven't come across pregnancies with a lower body weight in the decade we have used this rule, nor have any rescues. The additional weight qualifier works to ensure total safety but also to allow the boars the utmost benefit from their mother's milk. The weaning process starts at around 2 weeks of age once the babies have made the shift to eating mainly a normal solid diet. It is a gradual process where the mother increasingly discourages her babies from drinking from her (in the end they have to chase her down). This process is generally considered finished by the group around 4 weeks. By 3 weeks, weaning is in full swing so average boars are not losing out when separated at that age. The group hierarchy will reform to accommodate any new members wherever they punch in the hierarchy.
Please take the time to read up on our comprehensive baby and mother care information:
Surprise-babies-information-collection
If you want to learn how babies and guinea pigs develop over the course of a lifetime, then you will find the article series I have written for Guinea Pig Magazine in 2020 highly interesting:
Journey through a Lifetime: The Ages of Guinea Pigs (especially the first three chapters)
Guinea Pig Facts - An Overview (includes a chapter on how guinea pig society works)
We do offer a sexing service in case you want a second opinion. Just looking at the outside arrangement of the genitalia can be very misleading. Looking into the slit and checking for the presence/absence of a penis shaft under the skin is much more gender divisive.
Illustrated Sexing Guide
Our comprehensive and very useful information resource for bookmarking, browsing, reading and re-reading (all links in this thread are in there) but lots more, including a little course in piggy whispering:
Getting Started - New Owners' Most Helpful Guides
I hope that this helps you?
