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URGENT bad mother

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HELPME

Its the first time we have bred guinea pigs and our mother gave birth to 4 pups 4 days ago. They were doing fine and were all healthy but yesterday we found one dead. We presumed it must have been neglected because there were alot of babies for the mother to cope with, but this morning we found another baby almost dead, we thought it may have been dehydrated and we did everything we could but it passed away. Only a few hours later we found another baby in the same condition and it has died also. We are almost certian its the mother trampling the babies, when we found the last two they couldnt move some of their limbs and were gasping for breath. Also we checked the guinea pigs 30 minutes before it was found almost dead, and it was absolutely fine then. The mother isnt neglecting them as she looks out for them, but we dont think she is being gentle enough with them.

We now have one baby left and don't know what we should do to prevent this happening to our last one. Any tips at all we would be extremely greatful for, please help.
 
Whenever i breed my guinea pigs i put in another calm girl piggy because this can help the mother look after the babies. I hope this will help.
Sarah
 
We only have the father who we are keeping seperate because we dont want to stress the mother out mroe if he tries to breed again straight away.
 
this forum doesnt agree with breeding as there are so many rescued piggies especially at the moment! which all need to find good homes. i dont belive that you should breed especially if you dont really know what your doing. hopefully somebody will be able to help you and give you advice but i dont think you should breed your piggies again :)
 
Ditto to the above.

Have you actually checked the mother to see if there's milk? They could well be nursing but the sow may not have milk and the others could have starved. Until then you will need something like Critical Care or Science Recovery and feed the baby from a teaspoon. Do NOT use any normal dairy products that contain cows' milk.

I would take the family to the vet to try and find out what's happening.
 
If they were gasping for breath perhaps they were premature and ther lungs hadn't fully developed?

Sorry for your loss :(
 
I would recommend you take the baby and hand rear as this has happened to a couple of my pigs. The mother kicks the baby and paralyses it, I don't know the reason for this and couldn't find any help on forums when it happened. One of our sows was ill when she did this so I think she was just fed up of the babies trying to feedfrom her. Sorry can't be much more help than this.
 
I don't think it fair that when someone asks for help that you lecture them.

Try popping mum and the babies in a dark box, that often helps her to bond with them.
 
It may not be bonding though, it may be that mum has no milk to feed her pups which is why three of them sadly passed away. I'd love to know how the wee pup was doing.

Sadly when this sort of thing happens people will say well why breed them? Personally if you do breed then you should arm yourself with enough info for if things do go wrong.

It's a very sad case and I hope the wee pup and mum is ok.
 
Completely Agree S&T.
Try picking up the mother and very gently squeezing her nipples to see if she has any milk.
If she hasn't got any milk, then follow the advice below and get some Critical Care or Science Recovery. You should definately bring the mother and baby inside into the warm. This could even be what's killed the others. How old is mum pig?
Hope Mother & Baby are doing OK :)
 
When this happened with mine it wasn't the lack of milk, the sow killed the babies, we saw her do this with one of them after finding the other unable to stand. The babies were already a week old and the sow had become ill a few days after the birth. People shouldn't be lectured on breeding their pigs, I agree as we all have different reasons for this and our own opinions. I only breed for myself and have never sold any babies or given any away.
Hopefully this one baby is okay but people lecturing may have put this person off coming on the forum now.
 
betty67 said:
People shouldn't be lectured on breeding their pigs, I agree as we all have different reasons for this and our own opinions.
Click to expand...

but this is an anti breeding forum. if you wanted to talk about breeding go to a breeding website? and you would have thought if people breed their pigs, they would resezrch every possibility beforehand incase anything happens

i think the information given on here has been helpful and people have suggested a number of possibilities/things that the person could try
 
Agreed Lez! Some forums are really antibreeding, I post on one and it's like World War 3 when someone mentions it. It's a highly emotive subject. I feel we gave the original poster good advice as well. :)
 
Lez said:
betty67 said:
People shouldn't be lectured on breeding their pigs, I agree as we all have different reasons for this and our own opinions.
Click to expand...

but this is an anti breeding forum. if you wanted to talk about breeding go to a breeding website? and you would have thought if people breed their pigs, they would resezrch every possibility beforehand incase anything happens
Click to expand...

sadly they don't research it then situations like these occur and its rescue centres that pick up the pieces
 
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