Loss: Diamond had six babies..

[karizma79]

A while ago I posted that I had adopted two female guinea pigs and soon after realized that one was pregnant (now realizing it was both of them!) well, this morning I woke up and went to check on Diamond to find six babies with her, only they were all dead. I am devastated because I have no idea what happened. I took her to the vet because yesterday her and our other sow got into a fight and I ended up separating them but she got beat up pretty badly. The vet said that she is very healthy and sometimes these things just happen. Not sure if they were stillborn or if she just did not properly deliver them?

My kids are so sad!!! We had a little burial and prayer for all the babies this evening. Now my question is, is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening to my other sow. She isn't nearly as large as Diamond was so I don't think she has quite as many babies. I'm so afraid of waking up to another catastrophe.

Any suggestions would be wonderful.

On the upside Diamond seems to be doing very well. My daughter snuggled with her for a couple of hours this evening and she seems to be doing well. I cannot imagine anything happening to her and am so glad that she is okay.

[Peggysu]

Oh I'm so sorry. This is a sad story, unfortunately this happens all to often.

I don't have any experience with pregnant sows. Check out these links about pregnancy and what to look for before and after birth. http://www.guinealynx.info/reproduction_faq.html
http://www.guinealynx.info/labor.html

[piggiecrazy]

So sorry to read about your loss. It must have been awful to wake up to seeing that. We just had a similiar situation on Sunday. We rescued a sow in September and due to her previous housing with males she was already pregnant. She was only 1 or 2 months old when we got her.
I was cooking dinner and my son called me over to the cage to tell me Blanca was delivering her babies and I looked and saw the one was just laying there barely breathing. It was devastating, we tried to massage it and warm it up but it was no use. It was so adorable, we were all sad to have to bury it. It had to be hard to do that for 6 of them.
On the up side, she did deliver 1 baby with no problems. It is already up and running around. It has also been eating hay, pellets, veggies and drinking from the water bottle. It is amazing to watch how fast they learn.
Our Blanca is doing well also.
I pray all goes well with your other girl. Remember to keep her calcium intake high. I also would recommend giving Diamond extra calcium due to the stress on her body. If I am wrong about that I hope someone chimes in and lets you know. Everything I have read though says they need the extra calcium to prevent toxemia. Don't know if that would apply to non- nursing sows though.
Wishing you the best. Sorry this went so long, hope I could be an encouragement to you.

[Wheekie]

I'm so sorry. What an awful thing to wake up to. Poor Diamond...glad she's doing well. Give her lots of love. Wonder if they realize what's happened...of course, they have to! Poor Little Mama!

[suzilovespiggie]

Oh my goodness how very very sad! Do hope all goes well with your other piggie and her babies are fine.

[akstrohm]

I am very sorry; unfortunately pregnancy is very hard on guinea pigs, and the loss of the pups (or the mother) is very common. As for the remaining pig, make sure you know who to contact in case of an after hours emergency and make sure you're adding a bit of extra calcium (i.e. alfalfa pellets) to the mom's diet. Other than that, there's not much you can do. Good luck!

[Ly&Pigs]

I first want to say that I am very sorry for your loss.

I do have a couple of questions that may help shed some light on what happened but I can't guarantee answers because so many things could have happened. When you found the pups, did they have fur? And to the best of your knowledge do you remember about how long they were?