Guinea has just given birth-need help.

[beopenguin]

Hi everyone.

I took home two guinea pigs from work when they were no longer allowed to stay. They were two sisters that have been housed together for roughly 3 months. Now they did spend a little time with a male, but it was around the beginning of Feb. We are having a hard sexing one to make sure, because last night (after having them for 2 days) pop came a litter. 3 babies, only 1 survived.

We have c&c cage, but here are the questions.

I'm feeding mom some Alfalfa hay and the pet store gave me some oat millet.
Is that right?

If the other piggie is indeed a sow, when can I reintroduce her to mom and kiddo. (I can't find info on this. The other gpig was bouncing on the kiddo so I separated them. And to make sure dude doesn't look like a lady.)

Is there anything special for diet I need to make sure mom is getting.

Thanks so much. We are super lost, and want to be good parents. Our Guinea knowledge is only based on 48 hours here, so please be easy. Others have been very mean so far.

Thanks again!

[CavySpirit]

That's sad. If you didn't know she was pregnant, my guess would be that all the extra handling and stress of the move was too much for the other fetuses.

If you have a male and the male was with the mother within an hour of birth, odds are not insignificant that she could already be pregnant again.

It's important to get the sex right. See this page: www.cavyspirit.com/sexing.htm

Give the mom and pup some Alfalfa hay as a supplement to the Timothy hay they should already have--for extra calcium.

Other than that, proper diet and caging and all the usual.

[CavySpirit]

If the other pig is in fact a sow, you can put her back with the mom at any time. Hopefully, you've got or are making a baby-proof C&C cage (2x4 grids).

[Pumpkin_RIP]

First of all, Welcome! *gives a welcoming hug*
I'm sorry that people have seemed rude, I'm sure they weren't trying to be offensive.
The alfalfa hay is good, but I don't know about the oat millet. I have never heard of it being used, and I never trust anything a petstore tells me, so unless someone who knows for sure tells you it's ok, then I wouldn't feed her any oat millet. In case you don't know, here at Cavycages we never trust petstore info because the people who work their are very uneducated about the animals there, and do not take proper care of their pets as it is.
Here's a link on how to find out the sex of your piggie: http://cavyspirit.com/sexing.htm
The baby should be seperated from mom at 3 weeks of age if it is a male.
Heres a link on how to do introductions/re-intros: http://cavyspirit.com/sociallife.htm#Introductions
I hope this helps! Feel free to ask anyone anything on here, it is an awsome web site. learn something new every time.

[rabbitsncavyluv]

Ditch the oat millet. The alfalfa is good too but make sure they have a high quality pellet and grass hay and the veggies daily too.

There are stickies in the diet forum here. The info at Guinea Lynx :: A Medical and Care Guide for Your Guinea Pig is good too.

[Wheek Weak]

A fantastic source for the proper diet for cavys is right here: http://www.guineapigcages.com/forum/...arts-info.html

Make sure to read all of the stickies at the top of each forum of this site. They contain loads and loads of great information about caring for guinea pigs. After you read all of that...you'll know more about the proper care of cavys than you ever thought possible (believe me...I speak from experience!).

Good luck with your new piggies and post pigtures for us to "ooh" and "aah" over!

[auburnmare5]

Welcome! I would go on guinealynx and find the page on sexing. make sure you baby-proof your cage. (Higher coroplast- or something similar) I agree that Alfalfa is good. Make sure there is some Timothy in there though.

[DosLunas]

Congratulations! How cool to have to cute piggies and a babby. So excited for you. I so appreciate your question as something similar happened to me and I am looking for the same information, so this was great. I love learning about Guinea pigs, just love my 2. The sexing page was vey helpful, but still one of my pigs was wrongly sexed. But he also was wrongly sexed by the vet and the pet store. I now have found a better vert, but still need to learn so much! Best of luck and again thanks for the question.