Young (4 months) sow showing atypical behaviour

[Euphemia]

Hi,

My family has been keeping and breeding (non commercial, we keep the females and give the males to a friend) for well over a decade, and from our latest litter born boxing day we kept the two sows. One of them is behaving completely normally but the other is starting to concern me. From a young age (at introduction to the herd and seperation from her brothers) she's stuck out as a loner - hiding in a baby sized space in their temporary enclosure rather than cuddling up to the others. We've had a pest issue and to stop their dry food attracting this we've started shutting them in at night, and again about half the time we have to search the garden for her. Last night this was so severe (she was behind their hutch, having wriggled into a gap no other piggy has gotten through) we shut her in with her mum.

Usually my mum handles them but upon picking her up I noticed she calls loudly when touched. She's sat on my lap now and when stroked very gentley makes short squeaking sounds which leads me to rule out a pain problem. The only thing I've come up so far is that she may be somewhere on the autism spectrum, but I'm not sure if guinea pigs can be and have certainly never heard of it. Has anyone else seen something similar or know what it could be and how to help her? I don't mind her problem with being touched, I just worry about her not fitting in with our other 9 (including her, 8 females and 2 neutered males) as they live out and I'm scared she'll get cold and sick. We've never had a guinea pig behave like this and I'm at a loss.

Thanks for reading,
Euphemia

 

[Lady Kelly]

Hello and welcome the forum.

On signing up to the forum you ticked a box to agree to the forums terms and conditions. The forum is a rescue friendly forum and the discussion of intentional breeding is prohibited. You are welcome as a member here and I am solely highlighting the terms and conditions so no further discussion of breeding is raised.

Unfortunately I've not experienced what you are asking about to comment. I have had piggies take themselves off from the others but it's always been fairly normal for them. My Lily at the moment is more of a loner, occasionally I will find her sharing a bed with one of the others but she does seem to prefer her own company more often

 

[Euphemia]

Hi,

Am I allowed to keep this posted or do I take it out, remove that I bred her, repost, get told she was probably abused or unsocialised wherever I got her from, tell the person who responded that no, I bred her, and then get told to take that thread down too? I also think it's worth mentioning that terms and conditions is usually associated with things like privacy and data collection, not the rules of the site so perhaps it would make sense to put this rule in another place. I'm by no means encouraging breeding over adopting, it's just a key piece of information to my question. That seems like a very silly rule to have.

 

[Lady Kelly]

Hi,

Am I allowed to keep this posted or do I take it out, remove that I bred her, repost, get told she was probably abused or unsocialised wherever I got her from, tell the person who responded that no, I bred her, and then get told to take that thread down too? I also think it's worth mentioning that terms and conditions is usually associated with things like privacy and data collection, not the rules of the site so perhaps it would make sense to put this rule in another place. I'm by no means encouraging breeding over adopting, it's just a key piece of information to my question. That seems like a very silly rule to have.

Well quite frankly there is no need for rudeness. If your thread was deemed to have broken the rules and needed removing I would have done that instead of just raising it to make you aware so that you didn't fall foul of the rules. We will have to agree to disagree on what is vital information from your first post.