Putting Mum Back With Daughters?

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hattie.r

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I bought 3 babies two weeks ago, and now their mother is for sale. She's a year old, and the girls are 9 weeks. If I were to buy the mum, would reintroducing them be a relatively simple process? (i'd be quarantining her for a little while as the babies came to me with mites that i'm in the process of treating)
 
I wouldn't count on them recognising each other in the way humans do, especially as they now belong to different groups and require a formal introduction anyway, but any youngsters at that age are generally very happy to have an adult they can attach themselves to.

It would be great if you could get poor mum! Hopefully, she's not pregnant yet again...
 
pregnancy would be my biggest concern, but I do have enough hutches/runs for any special arrangements needed, and then at least she'd never get pregnant again! what are the chanced there would be a falling out, or would it be more likely that the mum would bully one of the little ones?
 
pregnancy would be my biggest concern, but I do have enough hutches/runs for any special arrangements needed, and then at least she'd never get pregnant again! what are the chanced there would be a falling out, or would it be more likely that the mum would bully one of the little ones?

The chances of a fall-out/non-bonding would be very low and mainly due to mummy-sow being extremely traumatised. In that case time will hopefully be a healer.

What you have to brace yourself for is some pretty drastic dominance behaviour, which is very normal as weaned youngsters are very firmly put in their place at the bottom of the group once the special protection mum and pups enjoy during the nursing period has finished. Mothers will also do this to their own babies, so even though it will be rather dramatic with vocal babies, they are built to accept it. With luck, that period is only very short (just a few days), as the dominance is very clear cut. Please only add hideys with just one exit afterwards.

Guinea pigs have a good memory and can recognise other piggies even after a quite a long gap, but they firstly indentify themselves via the group they are belonging to. That is the one bit that we humans struggle with, as it doesn't parallel with our human wiring which mainly runs via individual and then family identfication.
 
The chances of a fall-out/non-bonding would be very low and mainly due to mummy-sow being extremely traumatised. In that case time will hopefully be a healer.

What you have to brace yourself for is some pretty drastic dominance behaviour, which is very normal as weaned youngsters are very firmly put in their place at the bottom of the group once the special protection mum and pups enjoy during the nursing period has finished. Mothers will also do this to their own babies, so even though it will be rather dramatic with vocal babies, they are built to accept it. With luck, that period is only very short (just a few days), as the dominance is very clear cut. Please only add hideys with just one exit afterwards.

Guinea pigs have a good memory and can recognise other piggies even after a quite a long gap, but they firstly indentify themselves via the group they are belonging to. That is the one bit that we humans struggle with, as it doesn't parallel with our human wiring which mainly runs via individual and then family identfication.

thank you so much for the advice-i'm going for it and am going to pick her up at the end of this week!
 
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