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Pregnancy Possibly pregnant pigs

  • Thread starter guineapigpalace
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guineapigpalace

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Joined
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Hi, I used to be pretty active on here when I first got my pigs several years ago but now I'm back to ask some advice about something that I've yet to deal with. I have a guinea pig who lost her buddy recently and I adopted a pair of younger sisters and they are all now pretty successfully bonded in a trio. However, the girls were brought into the rescue I adopted them from with their mother, sister and brother (for a total of five pigs including my two) all in the same cage. The mother is obviously pregnant but there is a strong chance that the sisters are pregnant as well. According to the rescue, the latest they calculated them to give birth is September 22nd. I just have a lot of questions to along with the possibility of caring for two possibly pregnant pigs.

My first question, is it safe to keep all three of them together if they are pregnant? As a trio they get along amazingly and Nova, my original pig, acts so much happier with these two then she did with her previous cage mate. They groom each other, hide in the same hides and for the most part get along fine. I don't want to separate if I don't have to because I'm worried about breaking their bond but I'm nervous about having Nova in there with them if their are pregnant and more so if they end up having babies, would it be okay to keep her in with the babies and the mothers?

Also, what kind of diet should I feed them? Should I give them a higher calcium diet even though they might not be pregnant? They are very young looking pigs and I might start pulling them out of the cage every night and offering alfalfa to just them but I'm also worried about adding the extra calcium if it's not needed, any thoughts on that?

Any other advice or anything that anyone could offer would be appreciated. The rescue will take all the babies back after three weeks so I don't have to worry about finding them homes, I'm just nervous about taking care of my two girls and making this as easy a process on all three of them as possible. Thank you all so much!

P.S. I attached a picture of my two newer girls. Melody is the one in front that has the darker colors and Lydia is the blondish colored one with grey patches. As you might be able to tell, they are very little
 

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Soecara

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They will be completely fine staying all in with each other even if they are pregnant/have babies as long as the cage is large enough for all three adults plus however many babies they have.

Given they are quite young extra calcium is needed for their growing bones regardless of if they are pregnant or not so yes you absolutely should give extra calcium. Otherwise just keep feeding them as normal.

Make sure you have an emergency vet you can contact if something goes wrong. Have some scales on hand to weigh the babies after they are born, but do keep in mind they WILL lose weight for the first day or two, this is completely normal as it takes a while for the mother to get her milk in properly. You want to track their weights in case one is having issues such as not getting enough milk because the siblings hog it all, in which case some one on one time with mum may be in order.

Also if they both do happen to be pregnant don't be surprised if the babies don't strictly stay with their birth mother. I had two sows birth within a week of each other and more than half the babies switched mums and nursed from/follow the other sow, one even kept changing and would nurse from both sows.
 
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