My 6month old woke me for a feed at about 5am this morning. I sat there half asleep while he fed just wanting to crawl back under the warm blankets, when I remembered about Sheba. The last time I'd checked her was 11:30pm. No babies then - but she was looking a little restless.
So once my little man was safely tucked back into his cot, I snuck in to check on Miss Sheba. And sure enough there was a cute little face snuggled in next to her.
I didn't want to wake the kids, so I tried to stifle my excitement while I checked Sheba was ok and lifted out the babies. Three BIG boys! My hubby came in while I was checking them over (he knew they must have been born when I hadn't come back to bed!). They were dry and so so clean, so must have been born in the early hours of this morning, Sunday the 28th August 2011. (It always astounds me how clean the mumma guinea pigs keep themselves and the bubs during birth.)
I tried to go back to sleep, but just lay awake thinking of names for them. When it got light enough I got a better chance to check them over and get some photos (see posts below). We've called them 'Bear', 'Ben' and 'Bodie'. These are just their name's while they stay here with us though, and their new families are totally welcome to change them!
First impressions suggest that these guys will be more Sheltie-like than anything, no curls unfortunately. I shouldn't really be surprised though as the curly gene in guinea pigs is recessive, so unless Sheba had texel/alpaca in her genetic history the bubs were never going to have curls. They will carry the curly gene though, which means that if they were mated to another curly carrier, or a curly pig, the resulting babies would be a mix of smooth and curly (and/or maybe even tufted like the peruvian!).
(The happy parents are shown below, Sheba is the peruvian and Liam the texel.)
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