spp
New Born Pup
Hi,
Relatively new owner here looking for some advice.
We were sold three male guinea pigs in April, when they were only about 6 weeks old. We were told that because they were brothers they would be fine together...
We later discovered this was not a good plan, and we ended up having to separate one of them in July, as he was being ganged up on and had a number of scratches.
Definitely agree with the advice not to get three boars now.
So we put him into another hutch, and got him neutered (6 weeks ago), with the plan to get a female guinea pig to keep him company. This seemed like the best way to end up with a stable pair - we really don't want another falling out! And he'll get to be a happy little husboar...
Now we have a few questions:
Thanks for your help and suggestions.
Relatively new owner here looking for some advice.
We were sold three male guinea pigs in April, when they were only about 6 weeks old. We were told that because they were brothers they would be fine together...
We later discovered this was not a good plan, and we ended up having to separate one of them in July, as he was being ganged up on and had a number of scratches.
Definitely agree with the advice not to get three boars now.
So we put him into another hutch, and got him neutered (6 weeks ago), with the plan to get a female guinea pig to keep him company. This seemed like the best way to end up with a stable pair - we really don't want another falling out! And he'll get to be a happy little husboar...
Now we have a few questions:
- He has seemed quite lonely, and at points we have put the two cages near each other, but this leads to the other two rumblestrutting and humping each other, at least initially. It also tends to involve particularly our solo piggy gnawing on the bars between them a lot, so we haven't done it too much. Should we worry about this, if they seem to settle down after a few hours? We don't want to upset the hierarchy of the two boys that are still in together, or cause too much distress.
- We can't see any guinea pig rescue centres near us (East Staffordshire) that have females for adoption that we could date with, so we are looking at buying from a local garden centre (not the place where we got the others from!). How likely is it that a female guinea pig will not get on with our male guinea pig? Is the chemistry from a young guinea pig going to work better?
- Should we just get one female, or two? We already have three guinea pigs - just one seems more manageable but we could add two with the size of cage we have (Omelet hutch + 1m Omelet run with a tube attached 1.5m x 1m pen).
- Do we need to keep the stable pair of males away from the cage containing the female(s)? If so, how far away do they need to be? I saw a posts talking about the presence of a female being destabilising in adjacent cage. Our garden is ~15 metres wide, so we can have them either end of that if necessary.
Thanks for your help and suggestions.