I’m just about to say goodbye to my last girlie, who has mammary tumours. My kids and I are devastated after losing her sister last summer to the same thing.
do any rescues spay their sows and is there good evidence to do it? I know it’s common with rabbits if females don’t breed to suffer with female cancers.
The two already spayed sows I adopted not long before the only UK rescue with a full neutering and spaying policy closed down at the start of 2014 have both lived a normal life span but not longer than my normal sows (Nesta died aged 5 in the wake of an incisor removal due to a root abscess from which she never fully recovered and Hafren died aged 7 naturally from old age).
Several sows of mine who needed a spay for medical reasons (due to a womb going wrong, large and fast growing ovarian cysts or being found to have a cyst that would have turned cancerous if left) have however lived a year or two longer to reach a normal average life span, which they would have otherwise not had.
I am very sorry that you are obviously dealing with an inherited genetic disposition in your piggies.
Mammary tumours and cancerous ovarian cysts are not all that common in guinea pigs, unlike in rabbits where the cancer risk in does is 100% and a spay is absolutely necessary.
Right now, the risk of fatal operation complications in guinea pig sows is roughly balanced against the need of a full spay, which is a major and decidedly more expensive operation; so spays in the UK usually happen because the actual medical need outweighs the general risk.
The fatality rate in sow spaying ops in the UK is still higher than that in boar neutering ops, so the drive in the UK is very much opting for boar neutering in order to enable long term stable cross gender bonds.
There is currently more of a drive for preventative blanket spaying in the USA where vet cost are higher but vet access is often more limited and emergencies cannot always be seen as quickly as they need compared to the UK.
