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I finally got some!

fashion victim

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Well, I was finally able to find some piggies. I wasn't expecting them until much later, but this was a chance I could NOT pass up. Let's see. On the 3rd of January I got a call from one of the places I'd left my phone number in case anyone did not want their Guinea Pigs anymore. It was the feedstore where I got the Ivermectin. The lady called me and told me that someone had dropped off a very pregnant pig yesterday outside her store's door in a cardboard box. She put her in a spare cage along with some food and water and bedding and left her there overnight until she could contact me the next day (my cel phone was off). When she got there on the 3rd of January she found that the pregnant pig had given birth to 3 babies. She called me very early and mom took me in the biggest hurry and we went to pick them up. Since then it's been a constant flurry of shopping around for stuff. I already ordered a 9 pound bag of hay from Kleenmama with the limited funds I had at the moment on my Visa and the order is supposed to ship today.

I had to go get a bag of the Mazuri because I needed pellets instantly. Lucky for me there's a distributor very near here, only a few miles away, but he told me he could only sell me the biggest bags, which is what he works with. So now I have a 20+ pound bag of Mazuri which the pigs have to finnish before I order Kleenmama's pellets. Right now they're munching on LM Animal Farms alfalfa and timothy but they don't seem too into it. I suppose it's because whoever dumped her didn't give her any. I've also been trying to feed her different foods. She inmediately took to light green romaine lettuce but wouldn't eat anything else. Since then I've gotten her to eat orange, red and green peppers, a very dark green romaine, 1 green grape, 1 cherry (no pits), a bit of apple and a pinch of alfalfa sprouts.

I'm making do with coroplast walls around the area which are about 2 feet high so that my dog or bunny can get inside the Guinea Pig area. I can NOT wait until my aunt has the time to get the cubes and pack and send them here because I'm a bit of emergency, so I'll just go and buy the closet shelving which I saw at home depot. I went yesterday and bought a bunch of towels and I have some queen sized fleece blankets that I found while my mom and I were emptying out my grandparent's stuff from the closets, plus their old towels. The cage has 10 inch high walls, and the run has fleece, towels, newspaper and crappy hay beneath eerything.

The 3 babies are extremely cute. There's 2 abbyssinians and one smooth haired, all black with orange spots and a few itsy bitsy patches of white. There's either 2 males and 1 female or 1 male and 2 females. Not sure yet. I'm really opting towards separating the males from the females until the 5 months age so I can neuter them and stay with them. I can NOT bear to give them away because honestly I can't find anyone here who would go the extra mile towards the high maintenance of a 20 dollar animal.

I'll make a photoshop later account so I can add the pic of the babies here. Right now I'm completely exhausted from the stress and running around buying stuff. This morning my room smelled rotten and I almost died thinking she had toxemia or something, but it was just old vegetables in my trash can.

I'll keep you guys updated, and I'll try to deal with the pictures tomorrow!
 

JarBax

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Woweee Claudie - how exciting! I can totally feel how thrilled you are - and exhausted! The very first thing you must do (after a short rest, and checking piggies have all their needs and requirements) is to post pigtures! They all sound amazing, and your emergency set-up sounds just fine, in the meantime.

Congratulations and Celebrations!
 

Slave to the Wheek

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Wow! I know how hard you have worked to learn about piggers and I think you'll make a amazing cavy slave!
 

VoodooJoint

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Congrats Claudie! May I also say that I am SO PROUD of you for waiting it out and not giving in and buying! I wish more people had your patience and devotion.
 

Tulia&Susie

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Wow that's awsome you were able to take in those piggie and also exciting! They sound adorable and I bet they are. Thought up of any names yet or kind of waiting for their personality to show? Well can't wait for pigtures and congrats on the little ones.
 

pignewton

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Congratulations! I am so glad that you are finally a pig mama.
 

fourbwabbys

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Pigtures! Pigtures! Pigtures!
 

Lorvoll

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Congratulation on your new little ones! Yes, I'd say pictures are in order.
 

standuprookie

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Congrats! How are they settling in? Do you have any pictures now?
 

confuzioncity

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Welcome!

From Colleen, Chloe, Missy, and Murderface (don't ask..see my into thread)
 

Dinafair

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Congratulations on your piggers!

Cannot wait to see pigtures.
 

fashion victim

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Wow. It's been totally crazy settling them in. It seems like I've had to modify their area a million times. I've been getting them toys, different water bottles, making them litter boxes, buying more towels, washing fleece over and over again, vaccuming every few hours, vegetable shopping, etc.

I changed the wood shavings area to fleece, towels and newspaper. The shavings were a MESS. There were wet areas everywhere and loads of poop and I couldn't vaccum it all so I decided to use an orange fleece blanket. The color is SO bright! The babies popcorn over everything: after seeing the new orange fleece; when I gave them Kleenmama's hay; every time I give them vegetables; when I put them down after picking them up; when I make new hideys for them; after I made improvised litter boxes with dark green coroplast and neon green zip ties.

Mom is kind of skittish, she sorts of makes the "go away" noise when I step into their area, but the babies come up to me and climb on my feet and run around doing their little piggy things. I FINALLY got an appropiate kitchen scale. Not digital, but it has a bowl to put them in which is pretty big, and it weights up to 5 pounds in kg and pounds and ounces and grams. Very complicated, at least to me. It's been so long since I studied math. I'm going to weight the mom today and start treating her with Ivomec because I see she's missing some patches of hair along her sides. I'm going to go with the topical way because she's too wiggly to hold still to feed her some in the mouth and there's no one at the house with me until late in the afternoon.

I still have the coroplast outside walls because mom hasn't been able to take me to Home Depot. She can't come today to where I'm staying because she's cleaning her house, so tomorrow for sure I HAVE to go and buy those closet shelves. I have to change one of the fleece parts already but I don't think I have enough towels left, so I have to go buy even more today if I can convince my brother to take me. He started classes today and he couldn't sleep last night from anxiety so he'll be very wiped out when he gets here. The whole cage area uses 14 towels plus the small hand towels underneath the hideys which are changed every day. Plus there's fleece blankets folded in half over the towels and lots of newspaper under the towels.

I attached some pictures. They're not very good because, well, I'm a very crappy photographer and the little buggers are in constant motion. Sorry I took so long, I hadn't been able to "borrow" my brother's camera before. I spent a few long minutes looking for the stuff to connect it to the laptop and luckily it didn't need an instalation disk because I couldn't find it anywhere. Well, maybe he had already installed it here. Maybe he "borrowed" my laptop while I was sleeping.

More to come soon, plus pics of the rest of my babies (bunny, Chihuahua and hammies)
 

VoodooJoint

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I'm going to weight the mom today and start treating her with Ivomec because I see she's missing some patches of hair along her sides.
Treating with Ivec as a preventative is fine but the hair loss on the sides may not be mites (has she been scratching alot? Any redness or wounds?).

The hair loss may be hormonal from giving birth. Some sows do suffer hairloss when preg/nursing. If the hair doesn't start growing back soon then she may have ovarian cysts and needs to see a vet.

There are only 2 ways to treat ovarian cysts. You can have her spayed or your vet can try hormone injections.

Hormone injections may not be a permanent fix though as the cysts may come back after treatment and the hormones will only work if the cyst/s are not too advanced yet. I had one of my girls treated with homone injections and while it worked and shrunk/disolved the cysts she developed other (unrelated) problems and died 2 months later. Thus I never found out if the hormones "cured" her or were just a temporary treatment.

My vet is happy to talk to other vets about the treatment of Exotic so if your vet needs more info I would be happy to provide you with my vet's phone number.
 

fashion victim

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I'm treating solely as a preventative because as far as I know she hasn't been scratching. At least, I haven't seen her done so and she's in my room with me pretty much all day along with her babies. She has no redness or scabs, just places were skin is bare. My mom thought it was the pregnancy too. Let's hope it's only the hormonal roller coaster. If it's not I'd have no trouble spaying her. I already have a Vet. Emergency Hospital which treats exotics in a very prominent place near the house telephone and stored in my cel. But still, the poor dear to be operated and have given birth so young. She has gained some weight, I can tell just be looking at her. And even then when I weighted her today she was only 18 ounces. The little popcorning buggers each weight about 4 ounces. They eat a LOT. They're already eating vegetables by themselves, and they love Kleenmama's hay and almost everytime I peek in there's bound to be one or more eating pellets.

I forgot to mention that I don't have names for the babies yet. The mom's name is Cavalli, a sort of play on cavy and also what happens to be the last name of a designer. I'm waiting to be definitely sure about their genders before I name them. It's like it changes every day. I'm thinking I'd like to take them to the vet before their third week to get them sexed and have a chekup. I have a list of possible names, though, which I have to find as soon as possible. I'm so happy that I only take college 2 daysa week. I really want to spend as much time as possible with them. I'm hoping the mom will warm up to me because she is absolutely gorgeous. I noticed that along her sides she's growing gray fur which had not been there before. They all have black piggy lips which look very kissable, and I'm going to have to take a pic to show them to you guys later on.
 

nonamian_girl

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They are all beautiful, congratulations on finally being a piggie mom! You're doing such a great job, don't stress out so much :).
 

fashion victim

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Here's 2 more pics. I'm not sure now about 2 of them being abbys. They have very soft, silky hair which goes all over the place, and as far as I know abbys have a rough coat gene or something. I can't compare them to other guinea pigs, but to me they all feel as silky as my bunny instead of the bit rougher coat of my dog.
 

yarag009

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Good job Claudie - congratulations!!!! The temporary housing looks great. Cavalli and babies will be very happy, indeed!
 

fourbwabbys

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They are too adorable! I second VJ, hairloss on the sides is often hormonal, and not too uncommon after birth.

I'm not sure now about 2 of them being abbys. They have very soft, silky hair which goes all over the place, and as far as I know abbys have a rough coat gene or something. I can't compare them to other guinea pigs, but to me they all feel as silky as my bunny instead of the bit rougher coat of my dog.

My abby babies had hair that felt like rabbit hair, so soft you almost couldn't feel it. It doesn't start feeling rougher until they're a few months old.
 
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