Level of Effort? Taking care of an orphaned guinea pig pup!

[Eric Mat]

Hello everyone. My name is Eric and I have had guinea pigs for all my life. I adopted a guinea pig through petco's adoption program not knowing she was pregnant. My guinea pig Allie had her 3 pups on November 26th, 2016 at around 6PM. Although when I went to go check on her, I found her dead with three babies beside her. One of which was a stillborn.

I have done an extensive amount of research and have made a formula made out of crushed pellets, water and pumpkin for the babies. One of the babies has always been weaker and always had to be force fed. On her fourth day of life (yesterday), she passed away. I am now still hand rearing a female baby who is now 5 days old. She is doing great. Eating well, and is in a cage with two adult female guinea pigs who are teaching her how to eat hay, pellets and even a bit of veggies.

Now that I have gotten all that out of the way, my question is - I have been feeding the baby every 2 hours since birth. How much longer must I keep this up? Don't get me wrong I am so happy that the pup has survived and I absolutely love her, although as you can imagine doing around the clock feeding every 2 hours is very tiring. When can I stop the hand feeding? What else can I do for the baby? Please help!

thank you all so much!

 

[Soecara]

If increase the amount you are feeding each time you should be able to increase the time between each feed, given she is eating a little bit on her own you should be able to feed her once every 4 hours. Weigh her on a kitchen scale if you aren't already. If her weight keeps going up after a day or two on the once every 4 hour feeds you might even be able to cut some of the night time feeds.

If she keeps following the lead of the other guinea pigs she should be eating enough on her own by three weeks of age to not need much extra feeding as long as her weight says good, just keep an eye on her weight any time you change something about the way she you are feeding her.

 

[miniver]

I'm sorry to hear you lost the mother but the baby sound like he/she is doing great. I'm sure we'd all love to see pictures! Can't get enough baby piggy pics.

 

[TheFurryFriends]

I have zero experience with baby guinea pigs as the only two piggies I have had I got when they were 5 years old already, but I wanted to say sorry for the loss of the mom and the other babies, but great job with this one! I hope it all works out <3

 

[jaycriae]

I'm sorry to hear about the mom and other babies. I agree with Soecara, weighing the baby every morning is important, it will let you know whether you can ease up a bit or not. It all depends how much she's eating on her own.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk