Advanced mathematics - guinea pig multiplication

[YohoAhoy]

Hello all, am a frequent browser, and infrequent poster, but I have a wee dilemma....

Just before Christmas we bought 2 guinea pigs - girls, about 8 weeks old. All fine and they are lovely. Yesterday lifted house to get them out, and there were 4 tiny babies. Very cute tiny babies. Now it appears the other one is also pregnant - suddenly seems to have ballooned. Obviously pregnant when we bought them.

Apart from mortification that as mother myself I was completely unaware of their pregnancies, I need help!

So we have 6 piggies, with the prospect of more to come. Kids are delighted, but not so delighted at the fact we can't keep them all. But no way have we got room for a herd of piggies!

Does anyone have any advice on housing them until we can sex & separate (and give to good homes?) One cage per family? and then girls/boys after sexing? And if we do keep some (girls), should we have big cage for all or a cage for the oldies and one for littlies?

My head is swirling with thoughts of multiple cage hi-rises taking over the house.

Any thoughts much appreciated.

awwww i love guinea pig babies.

i think you'd better start asking everyone you know whether they'd like a little piggie

My BIL bought two girl piggies. One of them turned out to be a boy (they are apparantly very hard to sex). Unfortunately the mummy pig gets pregnant again within two hours of giving birth, so they had another litter shortly after the first. They had to pay £50 to have the gp sterilized at the vet which is expensive but at least stops any more babies.

Cute though.

Yep, that's already in hand

I'm just concerned about the logistics in the meantime.

i should think the more you keep the more herdlike and less tame they'll be.

how big is the cage? inside or outside?

ooh trice, not good. Fortunately I'm prepared to whisk any boys away around the 3 week mark.

Homes have now been lined up.

As soon as second piggy has her litter we're getting an extra cage, to keep the families separate. Then whe we find out the sexes, one'll be girls, one'll be guys.

When it comes to rehoming (sniff), we'll probably pass on the second cage to one of the new owners, or keep it if we decide to keep 2 littlies for ourselves.

Hard to be dispassionate when faced with such cuteness

ThHanks for your replies.

OK, well can say definitively that second piggie also female - we have 3 new babies with perhaps another to come

awww whereabouts are you? We're looking for piggies

Do not move them from their mother before 4 weeks, they still need to suckle until then.

You will then have to move the boars after this time, as they will soon be fertile & will try to mate their mother/sisters. This is called linebreeding & can cause problems.

Should add, we did the same. Brought 2 pigs, 1 had a baby (was pg when we got her).

They are all female & live together quite happily.