StardustEcho
Junior Guinea Pig
Hi everyone!
After losing my neutered boy last year and my older girl a few months back, my remaining three girls show much more dominance behaviour than before. It had crossed my mind to get another neutered boy, but I wasn't actively hunting as for the most part the girls seemed content. I happened to be visiting a rescue last weekend though and came across the sweetest boy. He's estimated between 2-3 years, the same as my girls and after a few failed bonding attempts with boys, the rescue neutered him a few days prior thinking he'd do much better with girls. After chatting to the owner and handling him, I was a goner. Now I'm picking him up this weekend!
I've been bustling around getting things ready for his arrival and have created this set-up for the next few weeks. It'll only need to be 5 weeks as he's already a week post-op but I'm likely going to err on the side of caution and wait till 8 weeks post-op before the (hopefully successful!) bonding attempt. In the meantime is this cage suitable? It's only a 2x3 (with 14in grids) due to space constraints which is far from ideal and should this end up for any reason becoming more than temporary I'll expand it somehow (no more furniture for me!) I'm also going to be providing lots of floor time once he's somewhat settled in.
I've made it separate from the girls' cage so while they can still see and hear each other, there should be no chance of any accidents through the bars, the high coroplast should help with that too. I've got two grids as a roof to hopefully prevent any acrobatic shenanigans! When they bond (
) I'll combine the cages and the 4 of them will have a 2x8 to frolic in.
Does all of this sound okay for just now? Do I need to take any further precautions to prevent accidents? Having never had a recently post-op neutered pig, do I need to do anything special to care for him other than making sure the wound stays clean? He's apparently eating well and had his post-op check yesterday at the vets. Any advice is appreciated, thanks!
Here is the layout;
And photos of the new boy (still debating names)!
After losing my neutered boy last year and my older girl a few months back, my remaining three girls show much more dominance behaviour than before. It had crossed my mind to get another neutered boy, but I wasn't actively hunting as for the most part the girls seemed content. I happened to be visiting a rescue last weekend though and came across the sweetest boy. He's estimated between 2-3 years, the same as my girls and after a few failed bonding attempts with boys, the rescue neutered him a few days prior thinking he'd do much better with girls. After chatting to the owner and handling him, I was a goner. Now I'm picking him up this weekend!
I've been bustling around getting things ready for his arrival and have created this set-up for the next few weeks. It'll only need to be 5 weeks as he's already a week post-op but I'm likely going to err on the side of caution and wait till 8 weeks post-op before the (hopefully successful!) bonding attempt. In the meantime is this cage suitable? It's only a 2x3 (with 14in grids) due to space constraints which is far from ideal and should this end up for any reason becoming more than temporary I'll expand it somehow (no more furniture for me!) I'm also going to be providing lots of floor time once he's somewhat settled in.
I've made it separate from the girls' cage so while they can still see and hear each other, there should be no chance of any accidents through the bars, the high coroplast should help with that too. I've got two grids as a roof to hopefully prevent any acrobatic shenanigans! When they bond (
) I'll combine the cages and the 4 of them will have a 2x8 to frolic in.Does all of this sound okay for just now? Do I need to take any further precautions to prevent accidents? Having never had a recently post-op neutered pig, do I need to do anything special to care for him other than making sure the wound stays clean? He's apparently eating well and had his post-op check yesterday at the vets. Any advice is appreciated, thanks!
Here is the layout;
And photos of the new boy (still debating names)!
