Hello from Kentucky

[BrokenGlass]

Hello everyone. My girlfriend and I are new to the world of Guinea Pigs. My name is Josh, and my wonderful girlfriends name is Stacie. I'll start of by telling you our guinea pig story. It's going to be quite long and I apologize for that! It should be worth the read though!

First of all, we received our first guinea pig from a friend. It was a beautiful short hair white brown and black spotted girl named Piglet (aka pig). The day we brought her home we took our first try at cage building. You can check out our first cage in the open cage two story section. It turned out really good if I do say so myself! We had Pig for a couple of days and I began to research about Guinea Pigs allot to find out how to care for her properly. That lead me to start to look into adoption to find Pig a partner in crime.

One day when I went to PetSmart I saw the perfect pig. It was an all black short hair with one white foot. I know that alot of people have issues with PetSmart, but to me it's all the same. They are all wonderful animals that need homes. So I purchased the pig who was from then on called Rudiment (aka Rudi).

Well we've had Rudi and Pig for a couple of months now. They have been great. It's been a joy to have them. However, about a week or two ago we started noticing that Rudi was getting really fat. We figured it was just her growing and that she would be fine. Well in the last couple of days she started to get really big. We made an appointment with the vet to get her looked at fearing a tumor. Well earlier tonight actually......we discovered that she was birthing babies! We didn't have a clue, and were completely caught off guard. My friend who gave us Pig has had numerous Guinea Pigs and assured us over and over again that Pig was a female!

Rudi gave birth to three babies. Sadly two didn't make it. We are not sure how. We didn't see that she was even having babies until the two had already passed.

So now we are in a predicament. We love our pigs so much. So far it seems like we have to give Pig back to my friend that we got him from. We want to keep him, but as soon as we put them back in a cage together he begins mounting again! It's either that or we are going to look into getting him neutered. If the baby is a girl, which it seems to be, we are going to keep it. If it is a boy we already have a home lined up for adoption.

So yea, that is our story! Sorry to be so long winded. It has just been a crazy day!

We are glad to be part of the community! We have already learned so much from this website. It's a wonderful tool for learning about the animals we have fallen in love with!

Josh and Stacie

[Ly&Pigs]

Hi and welcome.

Your story is one of the reasons we don't advocate getting pets from petstores. You unfortunately bought a pregnant sow from the sounds of it and one that most likely wasn't taken care of very well hence the reason she lost two pups. If you still had both together when she gave birth there's a good chance that she could be pregnant again because they go into heat within hours of giving birth.

Technically you don't adopt from a petstore, you purchase. Maybe if you read many of the stories on the forum here (especially reading our kitchen forum) you will find there is a huge difference in getting pigs from rescues/shelters and getting them from petstores.

Please take the time to read all the sticky threads at the tops of the different forum sections as they contain valuable information.

[BrokenGlass]

I have read up on it. Thanks for the insight. I did not leave the two pigs together after she gave birth and haven't. Pig is going back to my friends house and we are keeping Rudi and the baby as long as the baby is a female as well.

The times of purchase and birth do not line up for Rudi to have been pregnant when we purchased her. Not only that but the baby looks like a mini me to Pig. So i'm pretty sure it's his baby.

I didn't even know about adoption whenever I purchased Rudi. Like I said I am new to guinea pigs so I had no clue. Now I know the difference and would adopt instead of purchase. But I still stand by the fact that pet store animals need homes as well. They didn't do anything to deserve to be killed off due to not being purchased.

anyways, just wanted to tell you that was not informed and am now after reading this board including the sticked posts at the top.

Thank you.