Sahara, and the worst case of neglect I've seen

Yet again, I was having a quick browse through the gumtree listings, just to see who was advertising what, and to check for anything that needed attention - when I spotted an ad selling a 4 month old male and female guinea pig together. They looked ok in the pic, but the fact that they were together meant a high chance the girl was pregnant. So I made the call.

About an hours worth of negotiation later and I'd established the the girl had 'a bit of a skin condition' that was being treated with pet shop mite spray (the most ineffective, irresponsible 'medication' pet shops can stock in my opinion!). I explained what the guinea pig would need as proper treatment, and eventually negotiated to adopt just her.




This is what I found. The 'skin condition' is a full blown case of mange mites, with extensive hair loss, scabbing, crusting and weird skin thickening. I felt bumps in her belly, but no movement. I made the unfortunate prediction on my facebook page yesterday morning that she'd probably miscarry or deliver stillborns. Late yesterday evening this is just what happened - four partially formed, partially decayed babies were aborted. The smell alone was horrendous!

Thankfully, Tracey from Perfect Angel Cavies generously offered to bring me around some antibiotics for Sahara this morning, and she's had her first dose. I don't know if she's managed to pass all the toxins from the decaying babies/placentas, but her best chance if there is still an infection is with the antibiotics.

It's just such a horrible situation - and I'm sure I've only just scratched the surface of her illnesses... It's just a wait and see situation now. If she can survive the next week, and we can kick the mange, she's got a good chance.

An Update on Ripley

As I mentioned on Friday, it appears that Miss Ripley had a partial miscarriage sometime that morning. I explained at the time that I wasn't sure what had happened, as she still felt like she was in the early stages of pregnancy to me, even after finding her with blood on her bottom/mouth and a placenta in the hay. Logically, I would think that if she was to miscarry one baby, she would loose them all. But it seems as if this may not necessarily be the case for guinea pigs?

These are some photos of Ripley taken this afternoon. As you can see there is still a reasonable 'baby bump'. There are a few possibilities as to why she looks like this. Firstly - she is still pregnant, the baby/s are fine, and will be born when ready.
Secondly - she is still pregnant, but may miscarry any remaining babies.
Thirdly - she's not pregnant, and it's something nasty, like a growth of some kind.
Fourth - she's not pregnant, and is just unusually chubby for her size!?

She really has me baffled! She's still as cheeky and funny as ever, so what ever is going on doesn't seem to be bothering her... it just has me guessing!

Kobe's babies have arrived!

Yep - MORE babies! lol. The last litter for a while now though. No one else is confirmed pregnant yet, so at least a good month's rest for us all!

This morning, at about 6am, Kobe delivered four beautiful big babies.



This is the only lady of the litter, and she has already been claimed. Little Olivia is a dilute 'silver' agouti (instead of having the black base colour and white tip, it's more of a slate base colour and palest cream/white tip. Very unusual and pretty!).


Olivia weighed in at 80g, and has the cute little crest like her Aunty Sparrow and her mum. She will be a classic smooth coat, but will be a rex carrier.



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This little man was the real surprise from the litter - a stunning jet black rex! I've called him Onyx, and he was the biggest bub at 95g. He has just the tiniest hint of chocolate on his toes, and a tiny tiny spot on his shoulders.


Onxy will very likely grow up to look like his daddy Sprout, with the frizzy, curly rex fur. He is a lovely little man and is as yet unclaimed! (All the unclaimed bubs from the last fortnight are now over on the available page).



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This little guy is Oscar, and is almost identical to Olivia! He even weighed the same - 80g. He has the same agouti colouring, and the crest on his head.



Some of the bubs appear to have the blue-cast to the eyes (known simply as blue-eyes in guinea pigs). I've never actually had this in a litter before, so am a little excited about it. You can just make it out in these photos of Oscar, but it's a little more obvious on Otis below...



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And this is Otis. He is the dilute 'silver' agouti as well, with palest cream/white patches. (I still can't decide if the light colour is white or very pale cream... in some lights it has the faintest cream tinge... like an off-white! It could be because the babies were still a bit messy from birth... but it seemed pretty uniform). And you can also see the blue tone to the eye on this close up of Otis too. Most noticeable on the 'whites' of the eye.



Otis weighed in at a healthy 80g as well, so we didn't really get a runt in this litter. He is going to be a classic short haired smooth coat. Seriously gorgeous, and seriously low maintenance!




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So, after checking over the babies, I decided to let the four new mums and fifteen (!) babies have a run on the grass (which meant I had to make some surprisingly time-consuming alterations to the cage to make sure tiny bodies couldn't escape between the bars!). It was cuteness overload!








We also has some sad news this morning as well. After I'd checked over Kobe's babies, I was in the mansion cage when I noticed a lone placenta sitting in a patch of blood on the hay. No one had even been confirmed pregnant, so I was seriously baffled for a good 30sec or so. I looked around expecting to see a new baby in there - but nothing. So each girl got checked, until I got to Ripley... she had blood staining on her bottom and mouth. The most logical conclusion is that she has had a miscarriage. At most, she would have been 5 weeks pregnant (about half way), with her second back-to-back litter. I'm thinking that her little body just couldn't handle it. She seems fine now, no further bleeding, running, eating, playing. But she still feels more pudgy than I'd expect for a girl her size. So we'll just have to keep a close eye on her for the next few weeks. I'm not sure if guinea pigs can have a partial miscarriage, then go on to deliver healthy full term bubs... this will be something new for me if it happens! (She could also just be perfectly healthy and fat too! Time will tell :P).