Canada Guinea Pig Behavior

[MaggieandSeeds]

During the last five minutes of floor time today I noticed that one of my guinea pigs was sliding her bum across the floor and is constantly trying to climb on the back of the other female followed by a lot of purring. She also looked face to face at the other guinea pig and raised her head a couple of times. Lastly, the same pig shot out a jet of urine which had almost hit me (I was in the floor time area)lol... When I put them back in their cage the same guinea pig once again chased the other piggy really quickly until I came back to the room 2 minutes later. I am kind of worried because they have been doing this for the past two days during floor time. Before this, the two females have been great companions for the 1.5 weeks that I have had them for. I think that they might be trying to decide the more dominant pig.

 

[bpatters]

You may be right -- it may be a dominance issue. Or, one of them could be in heat. Since you have had them together for several days before this started, I tend to think it's heat.

How old are your pigs? If the behavior doesn't stop soon, you may need to have her evaluated to see if she has ovarian cysts -- they can cause all sorts of hormonal behavior. But they don't usually affect young pigs -- mostly it's middle-aged or older pigs who have them. That's not to say it can't happen to young ones, just that it usually doesn't.

The other possible issue is cage size. How large is your cage?

 

[MaggieandSeeds]

The pigs are more than one month old. Is this irregular?

 

[Delaine]

My girls go through the exact same behaviour around every 16 days. First one and then a couple of days the other one, like clock work. I have been marking it on my calendar for 9 months. Only one girl sprays, but I can count on a sticky urine patch on the other one for a couple of days and then all goes well until the next heat. By the way when do guinea pigs hit menopause????

 

[bpatters]

Piggy menopause! That's my laugh for the morning! I have no idea when that happens.

What I think is odd is that some of them spray pee and others don't. I have two 2.5-year-old females, and to my knowledge, neither of them has ever sprayed the other, or me. They don't seem to know about that, and I certainly hope neither of them figures it out. They haven't figured out burrowing under things, either, which is also fine with me.