Looking for some rescue piggies ( of the cavy variety!)

[LordOfTheFlies]

I'm going to phone some local rescues to find us some guinea-pigs.

I've had loads of piggies as a child but ours were mostly female. We did have an accidental boy (he was sold as a girl, so we ended up with piglets of course )
We re-homed the boy babies and kept the girls. So I've only had one adult male.

I'd rather have 2 girls. Boy/girl would work if the boy was neutered.
How common is it to neuter boys.

How does a 2 boy pair work out. Would they have to be neutered .Do they fight or do they naturally work out a hierarchy?
Our females had a definate pecking order.The oldest sow (the mum of two litters) was a real character, not the most cuddly and the one most likey to give us a quick bite if she reckoned we deserved it!

DD has set her heart on at least one boy (she'd prefer 2) so I think boy/girl would work best.

TIA

No experience of boys but GP rescue will be able to answer all your questions. Well done you for going to a rescue - buying piggies from a shop just seems so wrong to me as there are so many little piggies that need a good home.

Where are you based? There is a guinea-pig rescue in Nottingham called Avalon.

I've got a pair of boys, and they are charming little guys (only had girls before so this was a new thing!). As long as they have been raised together they shouldn't fight. The only things they might fight over are food and girls, so don't have 2 boys if you have a girl in a separate cage nearby, and don't let their food runout (which you shoudln't anyway!) and they should be fine.

Ours were a year old when we got them (rescues!) and we've had them a year. They have the odd grumpy day - bit of growling at each other etc but they have 2 bedroom areas and a big enough cage that they can wander away from each other if they want to.

The downside of a boy/girl pair is that one of them would have to be neutured. Some rescues will do this but piggies are not good with anasthetics so many rescues will not neuter unless there's a medical need.

I'm in Essex and we've got a pair of young boys (nearly a year) reserved at a rescue foster home.

I've only had one adult male (as a child) and he had to be kept seperate otherwise we'd be over-run with piglets.

I'm reading on a rescue forum that if they have lots of space it tends to lessen the urge to fight. These are brothers and must go as a pair so that sounds fine. I've got no other GPs so no females to fight over.

Just been reading about impaction in older boys.(My female GPs I had as a child lived to 6-7 but it's not a girl GP problem)

Don't like the idea of neutering unless necessay- it sounds like a drastic op for a little critter !

Sounds like you've got everything set! They sound about the same age as our two when we got them. Rescues find it harder to rehome boys than girls because of pre-conceptions about caring for them.

Definitely right about the space thing. We have a smaller cage that we use when we travel (the big one won't fit in the car!) and much more than a week or so in that and they start to get grumpy! They're fine in their bigger cage at home though. Plenty of time out in the run is good for them too - more space and lots of grass eating to distract them.